Without arguing for or against circumcision, and without bringing in the many diseases contracted over the centuries from metzitza b'peh, the oral-to-genital-suction traditionally preformed by the mohel on the bleeding infant immediately after the circumcision cut has been made, or the many children who died or were maimed from infections or loss of blood, I believe the history presented by Rabbi Aaron is incorrect. Here's why:

Jews at various times in history voluntarily ceased circumcising their sons. One example that comes readily to mind is during the Hellenistic Age, but there were others, as well.

The ritual itself has dramatically changed. Originally, only a small piece of the foreskin was removed. Later, after Jews tried to reverse their circumcisions through various stretching procedures, the rabbis increased the amount of foreskin taken and also ordered the total removal of the underlying membrane. In other words, today's circumcision is a much more radical procedure than the circumcision of the Torah. (I don't have the source for this readily available so reader beware until I can come up with it.)

The Forward notes the growing number of Jewish ant-circumcision activists and the growing number of Jews who voluntarily do not circumcise their sons. Perhaps, in light of #2 above, it would be wise for some to consider returning to Jewish ritual circumcision as it was practiced before the rabbinically mandated change.

That would still fulfill the biblical commandment and it would eliminate many, but not all, of the complaints of the anti-circumcision activists, especially the fear that circumcision reduces sexual feeling and pleasure for both partners.

In an effort to boost the number of ultra-Orthodox
men in the workforce, the Finance Ministry is proposing an exemption
from mandatory military service for married yeshiva students over the
age of 23 who have a minimum of two children.…

That's right. If haredim can get married and have two children by age 24, they're home free.

While this may put more haredim in the workforce, which is the aim of this proposal, more than likely it will mean more haredi babies. Why? Because Lithuanian haredim now marry relatively later than Yerushalmi and hasidic haredim, who marry at 17 or 18. But, with this new law in effect, the incentive will be for Lithuanian haredim to marry three of four years earlier. Their birthrate will increase as a result, increasing the over all number of haredim and making the demographics released last week even worse. This horrendous proposal will also gut the already paltry number of haredim who do serve in the IDF.

Israel's National Religious, Modern Orthodox and Secular population will continue to pay with blood while haredim get off free.

The renovation of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem that started in 1967 lasted over 15 years. During the construction of the Kotel Yeshiva over the Western Wall's plaza, an impressive building complex was discovered including the homes of affluent Jews, and ashes from the city's destruction in 70 AD.

The complex, better known as the Herodian Quarter – the Wohl Archaeology Museum, is the largest roofed archeological site in Israel (about 2,700 square meters). Actually it is a Jewish neighborhood overlooking the Temple from the final days of the Second Temple period. A bridge connected the Mount with the neighborhood in which the Temple's priests resided.

Findings reveal the lavish lifestyle of the neighborhood's residents including dozens of ritual baths, art works such as mosaics, frescos and stuccos.…

One of the most significant findings is the engraving of the Menorah. Since the Temple is less than 100 meters away, [and the Herodian Quarter looked down on the Mount and was populated by kohanim, priests, and their families, all of who would have seen the real Temple menora] it is quite likely that this is an exact replica of the real thing.…

Top left: The menora fresco c. 60 CE found in the Herodian Quarter; Center left: A coin from the Hasmonean dynasty featuring a menora; Center right: The Rambam's (Maimonides') schematic drawing of what he imagined the Temple menora to look like; Top right: Chabad menora based on the Rambam's schematic drawing and used for Hanukka. Please click images to enlarge.

In other words, the contemporaneous depictions of the menora have curved branches. The Rambam's version 1000 years later has straight branches.

Here's how this plays out now. No serious scholar today doubts the menora had curved branches. We simply have too many contemporaneous depictions of the menora made that way and there are no contemporaneous depictions with straight branches.

Enter Chabad. The late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson adopted the Rambam's version as a Chabad logo of sorts. At the same time, he claimed the Rambam's version was the historically correct version – the Temple's menora, the late Rebbe claimed, had straight branches.

I think the Rebbe first made this claim before the discovery of many of the coins, the fresco, and other contemporaneous depictions were found. Still, he stuck to his guns. Today, most Chabad menoras used for Hanukka have straight branches.

Is this a crisis? Not really. But it is wrong to teach the Temple menora looked a certain way when all available evidence says it did not. The Rambam would never have made that drawing if he had the coins and other evidence we have. He was not one for arguing against reality. That dubious honor has been left to today's haredi world and, in particular, its evangelists from Eastern Parkway.

July 30, 2007

I appreciate this opportunity to elaborate my thoughts on the Conservative movement's new Hechsher Tzedek (AJW 7-20-07).

I am deeply concerned that the Hechsher Tzedek (justice certification) will water down the sacred definition of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). Unfortunately, only a minority of our people keep kashrut with all the requirements of halacha (rabbinic law).

To preach that kashrut is a matter of how workers are treated, etc., will give our people logical reason to concern themselves solely with the social aspects of food production in the name of keeping kosher. Torah mandates that workers be treated farily and also accepts the authority of the goverment to administer these matters. The Hechsher Tzedek will serve only to drive a deeper wedge between Conservative and Orthodox Jews, further dividing Jew from Jew. It is disturbing that the Conservative team has unjustly made the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse the centerpiece of its campaign. In every news item and interview, they have referred to alleged conditions at Agriprocessors in order to justify their Hechsher Tzedek. I strongly dispute their allegations.

In May 2006, the Forward newspaper published a lengthy article defaming Agriprocessors. I visited the plant in Postville, Iowa, accompanied by Spanish speaking Dr. Carbonera, on a fact-finding mission. After lengthy and detailed interviews with nuimerous employees, conducted in their native language, we determined that Forward article was "malicious falsehood."

The Conservative movement asked to visit the plant independently. They claimed they wanted only to evaluate the validity of the Forward article. Instead, they capitalized upon the unsubstantiated charges of that article to demonstrate the need for a Hechsher Tzedek.

The Conservative rabbis who supposedly made a thorough investigation of the plant and came up with negative findings have never stated their qualifications and credentials to evaluate safety and labor issues at a meat-packing plant. In contrast, I retained, as a private consultant, a high-level OSHA employee to evaluate the safety of Agriprocessors. This consultant found that the plant compared favorable with other plants in the industry, and identified serious errors of fact and misleading statements made in the report published by the Conservative movement on its official Web site.

One must logically conclude that the Conservative team visited Agriprocessors with a predetermined agenda and predetermined findings. The Hechsher Tzedek is nothing more than an effort to show sympathy for and support of the labor movement (as does the Forward) and has nothing whatsoever to do with kashrut.

The Conservative movement has decided that the U.S. minimum wage is not an acceptable standard of fairness, but has not stated what is a "fair wage," nor how it will determine what is fair or not in matters of labor generally. When it comes to living standards, people of different backgrounds and cultures have a wide range of values. If no standard is specified, decisions will invariably be made unilaterally and arbitrarily, on the basis of if individual perception and expectation, rather than with respect to regulatory compliance.

Unless fairness is carefully and measurable defined, evenhandedness loses its protection, and Tzedek, justice, itself is endangered. We must all work together to preserve Tzedek, justice for all humankind.

a. The OSHA employee had no legal right to serve as a consultant.b. His 'findings' do not represent the OSHA.c. This OSHA employee violated OSHA rules and is subject to punishment and perhaps termination of employment if OSHA discovers who he is.d. Rabbi Z refused to release this "report" to the Forward or other media.

4. Rabbi Z and his friend Casriel Carbanero both have rather large bushy beards, wear yarmulkes and black hats, and appear to be, well, rabbis, just like the Rubashkins. Do you really think employees would open up to a man who has a business relationship with Rubashkin, looks like Rubashkin and has publicly defended Rubashkin?

5. As for his claims of diluting kosher in the minds of the Jewish public, first of all, the rabbinic edicts of pat yisrael, bishul yisrael, and gevinat akum have nothing to do with kosher and everything to do with public policy. Rabbi Z follows them all very strictly, more strictly than most Jews, than most haredim, than most rabbis. He does not seem worried about the confusion this may have or might still cause in the Jewish public.

Secondly, if people begin to choose fairly produced, humanely produced food over kosher food supervised solely by the likes of Asher Zeilingold and the other rabbis who presided over the throat-ripping in Postville and the throat-gouging in Gordon, Rabbi Zeilingold and his cohorts will have no one to blame but themselves.

Numbers 1 through 4 above may make you think Rabbi Zeilingold is dishonest. You can see more information to help you make that decision here.

And, yes, I would be remiss if I did not mention that Rabbi Zeilingold is the rabbi who 'excommunicated' me.

[Hat Tip: J.]

UPDATE 5:30 PM, 7-30-07: I spoke with Chuck Adkins, the head of the OSHA region that includes Postville. He told me just as he did several months ago that any claims linking that plant visit to OSHA are incorrect and illegal. He further told me that OSHA had eliminated any high-ranking officials from its suspect list including all regional directors. He said any claim that this OSHA employee is a "high-level OSHA employee" is false. OSHA is currently investigating these false claims made in OSHA's name.

…An honest understanding of the Halakha about saving a Gentile on
Shabbat is grounded in the fact that not all mitsvot can be violated to
save life. Idolatry, sexual offenses and murder may not be allowed even
to save life, however this flies in the face of our utilitarian
mentality. Shabbat has much in common with the so-called “big three.”
[Note R. Shimon’s view in Yerushalmi that a bystander may intervene to
prevent Shabbat violation even at the cost of the transgressor’s life.]
For Jews Shabbat may be violated to save life, but only on the basis of
a special limmud (inference)—“desecrate one Shabbat so that he may
observe many Shabbatot.” Where this principle does not apply, Shabbat
is inviolable.

Where people understand that religion may on occasion make life and
death demands, the law that Shabbat is so important that it is
overridden only for those who are members of the community that
observes it is difficult but not scandalous. In our culture this
understanding is lacking; thus the failure to treat Jews and Gentiles
identically will be interpreted as indifference to the fate of the
non-Jew, and will be perceived as tantamount to connivance in his
death. It will provoke hatred, and understandably so. In this case, the
theoretical gulf separating secularists from halakhists is not
universalism vs. particularism but the recognition that Shabbat is, in
principle, worth the sacrifice.…

Right. And in principle, if not in practice, those sacrificed are non-Jews.

Again, all things being equal – which they are not – if there was no risk of provoking hatred, of stirring up antisemitism, Orthodox Jews would be forbidden to save non-Jewish life on the Sabbath. That means even if no other non-Jews were there and able to save that life. Which means that, in this case, the non-Jew would die while the Orthodox Jew sat idly by eating his chulent (Sabbath stew).

And, as for Rabbi Shimon's view brought by Rabbi Carmy, that view is rejected by halakha, Jewish law. If one brought Hillel's Talmudic view (not the Hillel, by the way; this is a much later Rabbi Hillel) that the messiah had already come, to bolster one's contention that the coming of the messiah is not central to Orthodox thought, one would be, at the very least, disingenuous. More accurately, one would be lying.

Rabbi Carmy is the best today's Yeshiva University has to offer. It is no wonder that the Noah Feldmans of Modern Orthodoxy choose to go elsewhere.

…MANY HAVE written to me that Prof. Feldman's circumstances are
different, seeing that he was raised in an Orthodox home and went to an
Orthodox Jewish day school. He should have known better.

I know something of this matter. The award I was honored to
receive last year from the American Jewish Press Association for
Excellence in Commentary came from an article I wrote which designated
Jewish day school education as the single greatest bulwark against
assimilation and intermarriage. But that does not mean it is foolproof.
And not just for the Prof. Feldmans of this world, but for all of us.

How many who
have written to me critical of Feldman are themselves guilty of lapses
in Jewish observance? I know scores of Orthodox Jewish businessmen who
take their yarmulkes off at their Wall Street and legal offices, even
though they are stalwartly Orthodox in all other practices. But they
still feel a need to make an accommodation with the world. And do they
really want to be dismissed as goyim because they do so, or do they
want their communities to be just a little bit understanding of the
challenges they face?…

First, let us be clear. A head-covering for men is not a commandment. It was something Jews began to to with regularity only in Talmudic times, and it became the accepted, normal custom (note that word: custom, minhag) only late in the Geonic era. And even then, large sections of world Jewry did not accept it.

The Vilna Gaon, normally the most terse commenter on the Shulkhan Arukh, writes at length about this custom. He says that it is a minhag kept by the extremely pious, but it is not a requirement. He goes on to say that one can eat, walk, learn Torah and even pray without one's head covered. (For details, see the latest issue of Hakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought; Dan Rabinowitz, "Yarmulke: A Historic Cover-up?")

To equate wearing a yarmulke in a work environment not conducive to religious expression – where, by all normative understandings of Jewish law one is permitted to work with his head uncovered – with marrying a non-Jew – which, by all normative understandings of Jewish law is a flagrant sin – is mind-boggling. Did Boteach never learn halakha?

That being said, Rabbi Boteach's larger point is that Feldman should not be shunned. While I agree that the average intermarried Jew should not be shunned, a Jew out-married who, with Feldman's training in Jewish law and his firm background in Orthodoxy, writes a piece in the NY Times questioning his own very partial and low-level shunning at the hands of his former yeshiva high school is quite another matter.

Feldman knows in great detail what the Orthodox Jewish community thinks about out-marriage. And he knows that no day school or yeshiva can celebrate his marital choice.

Rather than leave things as they are and continue with his chosen path, Feldman instead wrote a piece in the NY Times that raised issues of Orthodox bigotry and the Orthodox view of non-Jews. This accurate (but highly unflattering) portrait irked many in Orthodoxy and beyond.

Feldman raised the issue of his intermarriage to a very public level and joined it with Orthodox Judaism's inherent bigotry toward non-Jews. He publicized that bigotry in a most public of forums. By doing so Feldman has removed the issue of his bed partner from a inter-family affair to a very public debate about what it means to be an Orthodox Jew in good community standing.

As such, Feldman is calling out Orthodoxy, baiting Orthodoxy, in effect, to a public debate on Orthodoxy's place as a moral religion. That is a far different 'sin' than simply marrying the non-Jewish woman he loves.

Like the choice of who he sleeps with, Feldman has made a choice – am I a lapsed member of the Orthodox community or am I a public critic of that community?

Feldman has clearly chosen the latter and Orthodoxy, rightly, views him as such.

I would go so far as to posit that Feldman is not Modern Orthodxy's "embarrassment" – he is Rabbi Boteach's. It is Boteach that accepted Feldman's marital choice and it is Boteach who prized Feldman's intelligence and celebrity over fealty to the Orthodoxy Feldman was raised in. It is Boteach who gave Feldman a free pass and, by so doing, raised Feldman's expectations and allowed Feldman to dream of the same level of acceptance from Modern Orthodoxy, acceptance that would have his non-Jewish bed-partner featured alongside him in his yeshiva day school's alumni newsletter. It is Boteach who muddied the waters and led Feldman astray.

Imagine how this might have been different if, instead of Rabbi Boteach, Feldman had as a resource at Oxford some of the best and brightest of Yeshiva University, who had gone to Oxford after ordination to set up an Orthodox presence there. For most of us, this type of altruistic behavior from Yeshiva University and its graduates is difficult to imagine because it so rarely in actuality takes place. That – the lack of overall compassion and vision from the rabbis who lead YU and the students whom they ordain – may be the real back-story of the Feldman affair.

Rabbi Boteach makes another error, this one of history:

The greatness of the Lubavitcher Rebbe was his genius in
distinguishing between religious and moral sin. Before the Rebbe those
who ate non-kosher were treated as though they themselves were
unkosher.

Of course, this largely false. All over America, in the 1920s–1960s, Observant parents were faced with children who ceased keeping the Sabbath and ceased keeping kosher. Were these children routinely ostracized? No, they were not. Outside of some haredim that came to America largely after WW2, ostracism was for the most part not practiced. To say this was an innovation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who came to America in 1942 and only became rebbe in 1951, both dates well after non-ostracism had become the norm in America, is foolish.

But then, so is much else of what escapes the self-deluding mind of Rabbi Shmuely Boteach.

July 29, 2007

I'm an orthodox jew living in Israel, I am interested in Astronomy,
Photography, Microscopy and optics as well as building telescopes.
In addition I spend a lot of time being frustrated at the general lack
of critical thought in the orthodox world.

…The review found that the anesthetists on call
for the operating room have "at best" completed the first stage of
their specialization and "sometimes have not even taken those exams."
The duty resident, a senior anesthetist, "is usually not called." The
review states that "anesthesia administered by an anesthetist who is
not an expert, especially if he has not taken the first-stage exams,
without an expert anesthetist being present, endangers the patient.
This is particularly the case during Caesarian sections, where general
anesthesia is among the most dangerous sort. Therefore the presence of
at least one expert anesthetist is paramount."

An anesthetist,
who is not the doctor in the operating room, must also be present in
the recovery unit, and "an experienced doctor" must be the one to
release patients to the wards, the report states.

The report
also warned that the hospital does not have an active blood bank,
making it potentially difficult to meet emergency needs at peek times.

The
number of nurses on staff "has decreased to a minimum," the review
found: there is a shortage of nurses in the hospitalization wards,
especially in delivery and operating rooms. Furthermore, nurses do not
undergo refresher courses on CPR, and "an atmosphere of frustration" is
rife among them.

The review also discovered that staff needs
for operating rooms "do not meet safety requirements." Beginning at 3
P.M., there is no nurse in the recovery room attached to the operating
rooms, despite the many surgeries performed in the afternoon and night.
Instead, nurses are brought in as needed, some of them "practical
nurses," "not one of which has the appropriate skills."

In
addition, the review cited a long list of safety violations involving
"rusty equipment" and a "low level of cleanliness" in the pediatrics
ward, including a kitchenette used to prepare baby food, and carts
containing dirty laundry situated near the kitchen.

(*) This "good publicity" was found primarily in the haredi press, for example, this article from the European/Israeli Yated Ne'eman.

You'll note that the hospital directors openly lie – the government's findings predate the Yated article, and were only made public after Ha'aretz uncovered the information. (Israel protects hospitals by keeping this type of information hidden.)

In the Ha'aretz piece, the hospital administration admits the deficiencies and claims they have now been corrected. A senior Health Ministry source tells Ha'aretz that is only partially true, and serious deficiencies remain.

In another article Yated Ne'eman notes the important role leading haredi rabbis have in the day-to-day operations of the hospital:

…HaRav Yitzchok Zilberstein expressed his pleasure at the continued development of the medical center, where leading poskim are consulted along every step of the way. "Maran Hashevet Levi and Maran Rebbe Nissim Karelitz set aside significant amounts of time to answer questions, guide, assist and advise this important place in every way possible," he said. "Every time a question is brought to their doorstep they address it without delay and provide the directors with clear answers all the time, demonstrating that the place is dear and important in their eyes.…

Apparently not "dear" enough to keep it clean, sanitary and legally staffed.

July 27, 2007

Dan Ben-David, an economist from Tel Aviv University, writes about the demographic threat to Israel in Ha'aretz:

This week, in which the First and Second Temples were
destroyed, it seems we do not need Sicarii [the Zealots who revolted against Rome in 68 CE, causing the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple – sicarii literally means daggers] to undermine our ability to
prevent the destruction of the Third Temple. Instead of bringing them
into the fold, our democracy is distributing daggers to various groups
that are striving to completely transform the nature of the country.…

How serious is our predicament already? In this
country, three out of every four ultra-Orthodox men and Arab women of
working age (25 to 54) are non-employed (i.e. either unemployed or not
participating in the labor force). In addition, the rate of
non-employment among their spouses, ultra-Orthodox women and Arab men,
is double the rate of their respective Jewish non-ultra-Orthodox
counterparts.

The demographic direction could not be any clearer.
In 1960, 85 percent of primary school pupils were in either national or
national-religious school streams, with the remainder in ultra-Orthodox
or Arab school streams. This rate fell to 74 percent in 1980 and 54
percent in 2006.

About two weeks ago, Israel's Central Bureau
of Statistics reported that in just five years, their enrollment rate
would fall to 50 percent. In other words, as of 2013, today's majority
will become a minority in the schools - and within a few years, this
will also happen within the general population.

To these
numbers one could add some data published by the Israel Defense Forces
last week. In 2006, the rate of Israeli men drafted into the army from
among all male 18-year-old Israeli residents fell to just 55 percent.
The rate of conscription among Jewish men is falling by about one
percentage point a year. The writing is on the wall.…

Haredim are a financial and a defense drain on the state. Their chosen lifestyle of rejecting work and living off handouts is crippling the country. Their insistence on having primary and secondary schools that keep students 'pure' by not teaching science, math, technology, history and civics poses a clear and present danger to Israel. And soon, sometime in the 2030s, these people will have the demographic majority.

Ben-David continues:

…If the future work norms and the national service
norms of children will be similar to those of their parents, then the
gradually declining minority that will remain will not be able to
support either the economy or society, nor will it be able to defend
the country. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran do not distinguish between Jews
who are Zionists, ultra-Orthodox or smug anti-Zionists.…

If
Israel's democracy desires life, then it must become a democracy that
actively pursues its right to exist. The time has come to collect the
daggers and distribute oars. We are all in the same boat.

July 25, 2007

At the heart of both of the Rubashkin slaughter scandals is the so-called "second cut," a cut made after the ritual slaughter cut to speed bleeding.

This was – until Rubashkin – a rarely used procedure. When it was done, it was normally carried out by the shochet (ritual slaughterer) himself, most often with his ritual slaughter knife (and, much less often, a similarly sharp substitute).

In large part this procedure, controversial within halakha (Jewish law) and not widely practiced or accepted, was done to make up for a slaughter cut that was, while still kosher, no sufficient to kill the animal quickly or, more importantly to halakha, allow it to bleed out. But this only came into play when the original cut was insufficient. A well done shechita cut would not require a "second cut."

Enter Rubashkin and his rabbis.

The leniency in Jewish law that allows for a "second cut" is used to do a "second cut" that is really a throat-ripping with a meat hook. In Postville, the animal's trachea and esophagus were yanked out of the throat with a meat hook and the gaping throat wound was slashed and hacked with a regular, non-surgically sharp knife. In Gordon the trachea and esophagus were yanked around in the throat cavity by a smaller meat hook, which was also used to hack at the blood vessels. While less gruesome in appearance the procedure's effect – and the pain it caused the animal – were similar.

This Rubashkin "second cut" is far from the "second cut" envisioned by Jewish law. And, again, even that older, kinder, "original" "second cut" was controversial and not accepted by many, if not most, rabbinic authorities.

Rubashkin does a "second cut" procedure I'm told because blood splash and bruising are common in ritually slaughtered cattle, especially when that slaughter is not done in an effective manner. Blood splash and bruising decreases the value of the meat. This is largely a problem for Rubashkin's non-kosher output, which is at least 65%, if not more, of his production. This non-kosher meat is sold to non-kosher restaurants, mostly in the Chicago area, and to large supermarket chains that buy Rubashkin's kosher output. The latter buy Rubashkin's non-kosher only because they need to fill up space on their trucks shipping Rubashkin's kosher meat, to reduce shipping costs per pound of overall product.

The so-called "second cut" as practiced by Rubashkin is a dressing procedure, not a legitimate part of kosher slaughter. It serves no ritual purpose and it is not carried out in the manner a "second cut" was historically done. It is therefore illegal, despite claims by the USDA to the contrary.

I suspect this issue will be resolved eventually in the courts and in congress. Until then, buyer beware.

I asked USDA FSIS chief spokesman Steven Cohen the following questions last night:

Again, is the use of a meat hook by a non-rabbinic employee to make an "additional cut" within USDA regulations? Is it legal? Is thrashing and probing the open neck wound with a meat hook humane slaughter practice according to the USDA FSIS?

So, is it legal to use a meat hook in the open throat wound of an animal a few seconds after ritual slaughter?

A few moments ago, Cohen responded this way via email:

An FSIS supervisory veterinary medical officer conducted a HumaneHandling Verification visit at the plant. It was observed that atcertain times, an instrument was used by a plant employee designated bythe rabbi as a means of facilitating bleeding. Clarification of theacceptability of this practice was sought and it was determined thatthis limited practice was acceptable as it is within the religiousexemption provided for in the HMSA. Therefore, by law (ie the HMSA) isit humane. Even though it was determined acceptable, the practice hassince been discontinued by the plant.

A plant employee removes ears tags, when present. The yellow plastictags are removed soon after the religious cut is made, however, the earis NOT cut, just the tag. The silver metal ear tag is removed byincising the ear only AFTER the animal had become unconscious. Allanimals observed had lapsed into unconsciousness prior to release,shackling, or hoisting. The facility was found to be in compliance withHumane Handling Regulations.

So we now know the following:

The USDA refuses to call a meat hook a meat hook.

Anything the rabbis want to do to an animal that even remotely can be linked to ritual slaughter is considered legal by the Bush USDA, even though the law states the opposite.

Humane Slaughter law will not be enforced by the USDA unless outsiders like PETA embarrass the agency.

The USDA insists the meat hook to the throat is part of the ritual slaughter. If it were not, the USDA would not allow it.

The plant's head of kosher, Rabbi Wiessmandal of Supreme Kosher (a haredi company) was in charge on the ground and is the chief agency responsible for everything regarding kosher at Rubashkin's plants, including this one, including the meat hook.

There is no way to determine that the meat you eat was slaughtered in a humane fashion, especially if you keep glatt kosher.

It's your choice, people. All I'll add to this mix is to note that none of the kosher certifying agencies involved seem especially trustworthy to me, and that should enter into your calculations about what other, non-meat foods you eat, as well.

This Ha'aretz piece from 2005 gives much detail on the Kastner affair (see my previous post here) and on the positions of Israeli historians, the vast majority of whom are on Kastner's side – including Tom Segev of all people. Please read the whole thing before you comment.

Also remember that the Israeli court decisions from 1956 and 1957 were made without the benefit of Slovakian archive material, material that, according to this piece, supports Kastner and the Jewish Council.

July 24, 2007

…It is the responsibility of the torah leadership to look out for all jews in every aspect of their lives. The number of hours spent learning is just part of the picture. The fact that this is not the pre-eminent issue among the Gedolei Hatorah and the community at large is a condemnation of our concern for our fellow jew. We are not concerned enough about people,families, children, to address this issue seriously and to solve it before it becomes an unmitigated disaster. And time is running out.…

… may not immediately post. TypePad is still recovering from the massive power failure that brought down its host (and brought down CraigsList, Technorati, and many other major sites hosted by that company, as well).

A special prosecutor has been appointed to look into allegations of animal mistreatment at a Gordon meatpacking plant.

In a complaint filed July 9 with the Sheridan County attorney, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Local Pride LLC allows cows to remain conscious for up to two minutes after their throats are cut during the kosher slaughtering process, among other things.

PETA's senior counsel Lori Kettler said County Attorney Jamian Simmons notified PETA last week that she was petitioning the court to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the claims.

According to Kettler, Simmons cited a conflict of interest within her office.

Simmons did not immediately return a message left Tuesday at her office.

Sheridan County District Court clerk Eloise Kampbell confirmed Simmons' request and said Dawes County Attorney Vance Haug has been named special prosecutor.…

At the end of 2004, the USDA issued a H.I.K.E. scenario to teach line inspectors what to do when they witness ritual slaughter and see violations. In part, it says:

…This second cut was performed by a person other than the religious
authority making the ritual slaughter cut; it therefore does not fall
under the HMSA [the Humane Slaughter Act] but is considered a part of the dressing process. Note:
The DO [district office] should be contacted for further guidance any time a second cut
is made by the religious authority or by an establishment employee with
that authority delegated to them. (In some establishments the ritual
slaughter cut is performed by an establishment authorized employee in
place of an actual religious authority, e.g. in Halal slaughter
establishments using a taped blessing.) …

Conclusion: The Noncompliance Record documented the inhumane
slaughter of a bovine. The PHV recognized through professional
judgment that the bovine was showing signs of consciousness and that
the plant employee had performed a dressing procedure on the conscious
animal.

The H.I.K.E. scenario tells the inspector to stop the line, tag the restraining pen and cease all slaughter at the plant.

So why do we see a "second cut" approved by the USDA, a "second cut" done with a meat hook, no less, done by a plant employee, not the rabbi shochet standing there?

I spoke yesterday with Trent Berhow, the vice president of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, and with Jim Shanahan, head of the local in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Shanahan told he he watched the latest PETA video with Dr. York, the veterinarian in charge of Humane Slaughter for this region of the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service. Dr. York, Shanahan, said, had been in Rubashkin's Gordon plant a week or so before.

Dr. York defended everything on the PETA vido, telling Shanahan that everything was done according to regulation. When Shanahan pressed him, Dr. York explained the,, from the moment the animal enters the slaughter box until the moment it is removed from that box, the USDA has nothing to say or do about what takes place. The USDA, Dr. York told him, does "not interfere with glatt kosher slaughter."

Dr. York's statement is inaccurate. Humane Slaughter law does regulate what happens during kosher slaughter, even glatt kosher slaughter.

I believe Shanahan's and York's references to "glatt" kosher slaughter mean that Rubashkin – the largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse in America – is getting preferential treatment, treatment other kosher slaughter operations are not getting. But this remains to be seen.

I called Dr. York to ask him about this. He refused to speak and referred me to his district office. The district office also refused comment, referring me to the spokesman for the USDA FSIS, Steven Cohen. Cohen, you may recall, told me last week, repeating it almost as a mantra, that the USDA "does not interfere in ritual slaughter."

Shanahan told me clearly the procedure done with a meat hook a few seconds after slaughter is not USDA mandated or requested, confirming what Steven Cohen told me last week.

This means this is a procedure instituted by Rubashkin and his rabbis. This also means Rabbi Seth Mandel, head of shechita (ritual slaughter) for the OU, lied about this when he claimed the USDA mandated the procedure. Or it means he has no idea what really takes place at Rubashkin's plants.

Dr. Temple Grandin told me that this procedure is not USDA mandated, that it is cruel and that it should be stopped.

So what is going on at Agriprocessors? As I wrote last week, probably this:

So what is happening at Agriprocessors Gordon plant?

In October of 2003 a meeting was held in the USDA between Agudath
Israel of America, rabbis from various kosher supervising agencies and
senior USDA officials including, according to some reports given me,
Ann Veneman, the then-Secretary of Agriculture. The rabbis complained
about the wording of a new USDA Humane Slaughter directive that
outlawed "sawing." They were afraid USDA inspectors would stop
slaughter lines because they would mistakenly view a shechita cut as
"sawing."

The outcome of that meeting was a new directive (some say the
wording of this new directive came from Nathan Lewin, Rubashkin's
attorney and a Agudah operative) that prevented line inspectors from
stopping ritual slaughter lines without first gaining approval of a
regional USDA office. This was understood by some inspectors to mean,
"Keep your hands off the rabbis and let them do whatever they want."

Indeed, one can see a USDA inspector in the new PETA Rubashkin video. He does not stop the line.

The meat hook is used to speed bleeding. It is not part of kosher slaughter. Rather, it is a dressing procedure meant to reduce the amount of blood splash and bruising in the meat, which reduces the meat's value. This primarily effects the non-kosher market, which purchases more than 65% of Rubashkin's meat.

What this means is that the rabbis who supervise Rubashkin, and who promised to stop this cruelty 2 1/2 years ago when the Postville scandal broke, have not kept their promises.

It also means the USDA can no longer be trusted to supervise Humane Slaughter.

Jim Shanahan was appalled by what he saw on the new PETA video. But he is powerless to stop it. Why? I believe because of corruption that runs deep within the USDA and, it seems clear, the Bush Administration.

There is, in my opinion, no way to know if the meat you eat was slaughtered humanely and the rabbis we entrust with certifying the kosher status of that meat have repeatedly proven untrustworthy.

What you do with this information is up to you. 2 1/2 years ago, I stopped eating meat and fowl when I realized the rabbis were playing fast ands loose with the truth. While I encourage you to do the same, the choice, and its consequences, are ultimately yours.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg writing in the Jerusalem Post asks an important question: All things being equal, should we build the Third Temple? His answer? After listing the long litany of disasters caused by or centered around the previous two Temples and exploding several myths in the process, Rosenberg says no, we should not:

…What happened to the glory of the First Temple? It lasted 40 years.
The Second Temple never achieved glory until its rebuilding by Herod,
and that lasted 10 years.

Will a Third Temple fare any better? The records of history are against it.

Rosenberg is a Fellow of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He is also the great-grandson of Rabbi Samson Refael Hirsch.

But what of day-to-day control of the Temple Mount as opposed to actually building a Temple there? Nadav Shragai, writing in Ha'aretz under the headline, The Rabbis Gave Up First, explodes some myths of his own:

For the past 40 years, right-wing and religious
organizations have been mourning the absence of the Temple Mount from
our national and religious life in addition to the Temple's
destruction. In what has become a ritual, they lament the destruction
of the antiquities on the mount and complain about the impotence of the
Israel Antiquities Authority, the humiliating entrance conditions and
turning empty areas on the mount into Muslim prayer sites.

These
groups say there is a vacuum as far as sovereignty, government, law and
order on Temple Mount are concerned. They say they are frustrated again
and again by the authorities' lies and broken promises.

They
are usually right. The only problem is that the politicians,
archaeologists or even the police were not the first to give up Temple
Mount. The rabbis were the ones to do so…

Shragai notes the rabbis forbid visiting the Temple Mount as early as June 1967 and that Menachem Begin tried to change the status quo there to allow Jews to readily visit and pray, and returning the sovereignty of the Mount to Jewish hands. He was, Shragai notes, thwarted by rabbis who threatened to bring down his government if he did so, not because of any concern for Muslims but because these rabbis feared Jews would walk on the Temple Mount in a state of ritual impurity.

This, Shragai argues, has been bad for Israel:

Sovereignty cannot be exercised on Temple Mount when
the sovereign is halakhically banned from entering the place where he
wishes to exercise it. The sovereignty on Temple Mount either exists or
it does not.

The High Court of Justice has repeatedly
dismissed petitions submitted by Jews regarding the Temple Mount
because it knows, among other things, that the Jewish desire to visit
the Temple Mount is not widespread. Most observant Jews yearn for the
Temple Mount from afar, because of the halakhic restrictions imposed by
the rabbis. In contrast, millions of Muslims frequent it. The High
Court will not change the status quo for a few thousand Jews wishing to
visit Temple Mount.

Rabbis with a broad halakhic-historic
view have already realized that religious emotion is a powerful
political factor in the struggle over Israel. They know that the de
facto renunciation of Temple Mount has weakened us, and that the
Palestinians, who control it almost exclusively today, derive from it
immense power to cause damage. The rabbis can still fix what they had a
part in spoiling. They have found ways in the past to ease severe
restrictions in times of emergency, such as the prohibition against
eating chametz (leaven) on Pesach or fasting on Yom Kippur. They are
capable of finding a way to moderate the ban on visiting Temple Mount.
Anyone familiar with the issue knows that this is possible, albeit in a
limited way. One has only to dare.

Instead, I fear rabbis will continue to lament previous destructions, even as their behavior brings a new destruction (God forbid) that much closer.

Just why Orthodox communities show higher than usual incidences of
spina bifida has not been established. [Renee] Krul said the causes may include
a lack of leafy greens in their diet due in part to problems of washing
such food according to the rules of kosher preparation, which is
concerned about bug infestation.

In other words, what we have is the Rabbi Blumenkrantz Effect. Obsess about so-called bug infestations, make eating leafy greens next to impossible, get the kosher supervising organizations involved to complicate the issue further, and watch as Jewish children are born deformed and suffer a lifetime of pain and suffering as a result.

The Torah forbids eating bugs. The normal amount of bug forbidden to eat would be a kezayit, the size of a very large olive and, in practice today, about one ounce. But rabbis long ago cut that amount in half. And they did something else, something that has made keeping kosher all the more difficult – they created a category called baria. A baria is, in effect, a whole bug. A baria can never be negated (battel).

So one whole bug will render a food unkosher.

Conversely, even many pounds of non-kosher meat can be negated. The most famous case is three (large) pieces of meat found in a home. Two are known to be kosher and one is known to be non-kosher. The problem? No one knows which is which. The law is all pieces are ruled kosher and you must eat at least a kezayit from each piece to demonstrate that you accept the law.

Yet a tiny bug, even if now unseen, will make the stew cooked with those three pieces of meat non-kosher.

It used to be a thorough washing of the greens followed by a quick inspection done with the naked eye was enough to render greens edible. But Rabbi Blumenkrantz, may God rest his soul, and other rabbis entered into a competition of sorts to see who could be more restrictive. Soon it became necessary to have special training to check for bugs, special equipment was now "necessary," three bugs found in 100 pounds of lettuce became an "infestation." And leafy greens became rare in the haredi diet.

Now you see how salad became treife. And now you know why haredi babies are significantly more likely to be born with Spina Bifida.

July 22, 2007

Yad Vashem received the papers of Rudolph Kastner (also spelled Kasztner), the Zionist official who, although he saved many Jews during the Holocaust, was vilified as a "Nazi collaborator." The vilification led directly to Kastner's murder in Israel in 1957.

"There was no man in the history of the Holocaust who
saved more Jews, and was subjected to more injustice than Israel
Kasztner," said former cabinet minister Yosef Lapid, chairman of Yad
Vashem's board of directors and himself a Holocaust survivor from
Hungary.

"This is an opportunity to do justice to a man who was
misrepresented and was a victim on a vicious attack that led to his
death," he said, calling Kasztner one of the great heroes of the
Holocaust.

Kasztner's backers say his actions were similar to
those of Oskar Schindler, a non-Jew whose efforts to save more than
1,000 Jews was documented in the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List.…

Robert Rozett, director of the Yad Vashem library,
said that while Kasztner's public legacy has remained in question, it
has long been established among historians that he acted in good faith.

"This
is a man who was engaged in rescue activities," he said. "Rescue
activities during the Holocaust meant being in touch with people who
would not particularly like to invite over to your house to have a cup
of coffee."

Kasztner himself didn't board his famous train to
freedom, instead staying behind and negotiating the further release of
Jews, risking his own life.

Rozett said the findings in the
archives support the idea that he was dealing in rescue and not
behind-the-scenes deals to sell off Hungarian Jews.

Kastner was widely vilified in large-selling book, Perfidy, by playwright Ben Hecht, a leading American Revisionist Zionist. Another book, Min HaMetzar (Out of the Depths) was published in the early 1980s by Avraham Fuchs (with whose son I used to frequently eat lunch and from whom I purchased several copies of the book). It was later translated and republished by ArtScroll as "The Unheeded Cry." The Fuchs book tells the story of Rabbi Wiessmandal, whose rescue organization saved many Jews in Slovakia, Hungary and Romania and who had a very low opinion of Kastner. (BTW, Rabbi Wiessmandal's son is the rabbi in charge of kashrut at all the Rubashkin meat plants.)

Both books are very popular in haredi circles, perhaps because haredi ignorance of history is so profound that the inconsistencies in them are rarely noticed. Yet these books serve as a partial 'justification' for haredi anti-Zionism.

On a personal note, years ago I gave former US Senator Rudy Boschwitz a copy of the Fuchs book because Boschwitz had been so instrumental in saving Ethiopian Jews. Knowing now that Kastner seems to be totally vindicated makes me regret that gift.

UPDATE: Here is a new post with much more background detail, including the views of many Israeli historians.

Writing on Jewschool, David Kelsey reports on a leading Ohr Somayach rabbi, Lewis Furman tossed out of South Africa because he is a "serial philanderer." His liaisons are said to include married women. One woman's husband, on discovering the affair his wife was having with Rabbi Furman, confronted the rabbi and beat him up. That confrontation – not what appears to be years of private complaints from spouses and friends – is what got Rabbi Furman exiled. Before that, it seems the rabbis covered up for one of their own.

What interests me most about the story is not the human failings of this rabbi – what interests me is the lengths South Africa's rabbis went to cover up the story. They allowed the rabbi to flee to Israel to seek unspecified "treatment," and blocked publication of the story in the Jewish media.

A source close to the chief rabbi said Furman’s behaviour was “not
criminal” and the Rabbinate’s comments were constrained by the Jewish
prohibition on gossip, loshan hara. Literally translated, it means
“evil tongue” .
But outraged members of the Jewish community, speaking on
condition of anonymity, have accused the Rabbinate of “sweeping the
matter under the carpet” and failing to be “transparent” about it.

Of course, the chief rabbi's position could not be further from the truth. The correct application of Jewish law in this case is to publicize the rabbi's misdeeds. But, as is all to common, rabbis opted for the less honest approach – and approach that protects their colleague while it endangers Jews.

Thankfully, the Times of South Africa printed the story. Now there is a chance that, if this rabbi seeks employment elsewhere, Jews will know about his problem and be very careful about hiring him.

It should be noted that South Africa's chief rabbi, the man who apparently brokered the deal allowing Rabbi Lewis Furman to flee, is Warren Goldstein, a 34 year old kiruv (outreach; missionary) rabbi who formerly worked for Ohr Somayach.

Rabbi Goldstein's doctoral thesis is an apologia of Jewish law attempting to make it seem advanced and modern compared to western law. To this end Rabbi Goldstein extols Jewish law's treatment of women, apparently never mentioning the very real problems of agunot, for example.

This type of dishonesty is central to kiruv theology.

So rabbis circle the wagons again and protect one of their own. Not much new there.

July 21, 2007

Noah Feldman, a former student of Maimonides yeshiva day school in Brookline, Massachusetts and currently a law professor at Harvard and a adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine) writes in an article titled The Orthodox Paradox:

…One time at Maimonides a local physician — a well-known figure in the community who later died tragically young — addressed a school assembly on the topic of the challenges that a modern Orthodox professional may face. The doctor addressed the Talmudic dictum that the saving of a life trumps the Sabbath. He explained that in its purest form, this principle applies only to the life of a Jew. The rabbis of the Talmud, however, were unprepared to allow the life of a non-Jew to be extinguished because of the no-work commandment, and so they ruled that the Sabbath could be violated to save the life of a non-Jew out of concern for maintaining peaceful relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

Depending on how you look at it, this ruling is either an example of outrageously particularist religious thinking, because in principle it values Jewish life more than non-Jewish life, or an instance of laudable universalism, because in practice it treats all lives equally. The physician quite reasonably opted for the latter explanation. And he added that he himself would never distinguish Jewish from non-Jewish patients: a human being was a human being.

This appealing sentiment did not go unchallenged. One of my teachers rose to suggest that the doctor’s attitude was putting him in danger of violating the Torah. The teacher reported that he had himself heard from his own rabbi, a leading modern-Orthodox Talmudist associated with Yeshiva University, [this would be Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik] that in violating the Sabbath to treat a non-Jew, intention was absolutely crucial. If you intended to save the patient’s life so as to facilitate good relations between Jews and non-Jews, your actions were permissible. But if, to the contrary, you intended to save the patient out of universal morality, then you were in fact guilty of violating the Sabbath, because the motive for acting was not the motive on the basis of which the rabbis allowed the Sabbath violation to occur.

Later, in class, the teacher apologized to us students for what he said to the doctor. His comments, he said, were inappropriate — not because they were wrongheaded, but because non-Jews were present in the audience when he made them. The double standard of Jews and non-Jews, in other words, was for him truly irreducible: it was not just about noting that only Jewish lives merited violation of the Sabbath, but also about keeping the secret of why non-Jewish lives might be saved. To accept this version of the tradition would be to accept that the modern Orthodox project of engagement with the world could not proceed in good faith.…

The sad fact is that there is little, if any, halakhic (Jewish legal) support for the doctor's position on the origin of the rabbinic permission to save non-Jews on the Sabbath. Non-Jews are saved because, if we did not do so, non-Jews would not save us and, worse yet, may actually kill us. That is the rabbinic reasoning behind the loophole that allows us (not "commands us," allows us) to save non-Jewish life on the Sabbath or at other times and locations where such lifesaving would be in conflict with Jewish law.

You can see modern day examples of this throughout this blog on posts dealing with Ethiopian Jews and their rescue. In this case, the people needing rescue were considered "doubtful" Jews (safek Jews) under Jewish law, a legal category that, while questioning the Jewish status of these people commands (note the term used here: "commands") rescue as if they were fully and unquestionably Jewish.

Even so, many commenters treat these people as if they were fully non-Jewish, and then go on to excuse the rabbinic and political leaders – like the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson – who refused to help save them. Another time this issue has come up is when Israel has sent disaster relief teams to Africa or Asia. Invariably there are a chorus of voices from the ultra-Orthodox world condemning this.

Yet, in practice, throughout much of history, it seems Jews have treated non-Jews on the Sabbath, have saved their lives and given whatever aid possible. This may be because the fundamentalism common among Orthodox Jews today was uncommon throughout most of history. Or it may be that the human need to provide aid and succor overwhelms any religious strictures to the contrary.

Indeed, the history of Jews and non-Jews in ancient Judea during most of the Greek and Roman eras shows that people interacted, often with a high degree of socialization and friendliness. (Indeed, many of our kashrut restrictions – gevinat akum (forbidding non-Jewish cheese), halav akum (forbidding non-Jewish milk), bishul yisrael (forbidding non-Jewish cooking of many foods), and pat yisrael (forbidding non-Jewish bread under many circumstances), all come at least in part to separate Jews and non-Jews.

These restrictions (often promulgated by Beit Shammai, sometimes by violence and force, like the incident described in the Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 1:4, the source for many of the restrictions noted above and described by the Talmud as the "darkest day" for the Jewish people since the making of the Golden Calf at the foot of Mount Sinai) were accompanied by a commensurate restriction – the forgoing of the command to be a light onto the nations of the world, to reach out and teach monotheism to them.

This closure of Judaism marked, until the flowering of Muslim Spain in the two centuries before Maimonides, after whom the Brookline yeshiva day school is named, the ghettoization of Judaism, a turning inward and, some would say, backward, into a reliance on magic, superstition, incantations, "demon" avoidance and a blend of neo-paganism and monotheism. Orthodoxy, especially haredi Orthodoxy, prizes the fruits of this backward slide – it prays to angels along with praying to God; it prizes the folk medicine of a backward era, often over the highly advanced science and medicine of today; and, in the face of overwhelming genetic evidence to the contrary, it continues to see what to them a very real physical difference between Jews and non-Jews, almost, but not quite, as if they were referencing two different species, not two different religious outlooks.

This is, I suspect, the overriding cause, the first (if usually unspoken) reason behind the tightening strictures put on conversion by haredi rabbis and the sad but all too predictable willingness of so-called Centrist Orthodox rabbis to go along with them.

If conversion to Judaism is an intellectual shift, the rejection of polytheism and the acceptance of monotheism (and this is exactly how it is presented throughout the Bible and in very early rabbinic literature), stricter conversion standards and higher hoops for prospective converts to jump through are not necessary.

But, if conversion to Judaism is a metaphysical shift, involving the nature and origin of the prospective convert's soul (and this is how conversion is often portrayed in latter rabbinic literature starting about the time rabbis became especially concerned with demons and began to formulate prayers to angels), then increasing stringencies deemed necessary to ascertain the "nature" of the prospective convert's soul can, to those less rooted in empirical reality, seem reasonable. After all, the soul cannot be seen; there is no way to detect it. making conversion more and more difficult, more and more demeaning, will drive away all but the most committed of the potential converts. That we may convert only a fraction of those that truly merit conversion, well, that is the price we have to pay for a religious purity determined by the status of an object – the human soul – that we can neither see, qualify or quantify.

This latter approach is concerned with finding Jewish souls "lost" in non-Jewish bodies. It is an idea foreign to Biblical thought and foreign to the earliest layers of rabbinic thought, as well. Yet it dominates halakha (Jewish law) as it is practiced today.

Reasonable people save lives first and ask questions later. Indeed, this is exactly what most Jews do, regardless of their religious outlooks.

Still, it is problematic to have a body of religious law and thought that so demonizes the Other that it is willing – and. in fact, endorses, even if only in theory – allowing a non-Jewish infant to die in a Sabbath building collapse when he could otherwise be saved.

To those who believe, as Schneur Zalman of Liady, the author of the Tanya and the first Chabad rebbe, did. that source of non-Jewish souls is wholly evil, letting a non-Jewish baby die when he could otherwise be saved is perhaps not problematic (Tanya, end of chapter 1):

מה שאין כן נפשות אומות העולם הן משאר קליפות טמאות שאין בהן טוב כלל…

The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever…

For the rest of us, as it always has, saving life will trump everything else. We are not here on this earth to judge souls. We have no capability to do so. All we can do is judge people as individuals by their actions.

Apologists will note that the only permission to save Jews on the Sabbath comes from the idea that breaking Sabbath law to save a Jewish life assures that Jewish life will have more Sabbaths to observe. There is a very real question, they point out, whether or not non-Orthodox Jews can be saved on the Sabbath because they do not keep the Sabbath properly, if at all, and saving them only assures many more Sabbaths spent in violation of the law.

What apologists do not tell you is how that halakhic problem is resolved in Jewish law.

It is resolved by pointing out that any Jew, no matter how non-observant of Judaism he may be at this moment, has the potential to return to full observance. There are no barriers to repentance. Therefore, he must be saved.

The non-Jew is still a non-Jew. He will never observe the Sabbath because he is not commanded to do so by God. Therefore, because he will not and cannot legally under Jewish law observe the Sabbath, he is not to be saved.

But allowing non-Jews to die in Sabbath fires, drownings and building collapses makes for bad public policy, especially when those non-Jews are in the majority and have armies and police forces. So the rabbis ruled that Sabbath law was to be set aside to save non-Jews, "for the sake of peace."

The Jewish doctor cited by Feldman was "wrong;" the rabbi "right." And that is perhaps the most serious indictment of Orthodoxy you will ever see.

July 20, 2007

When his body was found in the garage of the Chabad center,Don Yoel
Levy, his brother and the CEO of OK Kashrut blamed the wife of his late
brother, the mother of his children, for his suicide. They placed the
blame on her with accusations that she was mean to him and that is what
drove him to end his own life.Chana Levi was mentally abused and
neglected by her in laws while she was living a nightmare with her 5
children who were mourning the loss of there father.Don Yoel Levy not
only placed the blame on an innocent victim and caused immense
emotional distress for Chana Levy he also refused to help his deceased
brothers wife and five young children financially.Chana Levy (maiden
name Prus) was blamed for her husbands decision to end his dark double
life, because she was mean. The fact that Eliezer Levy was molesting
hundreds of kids and teenagers for years, sometimes in the presence of
his mother and his brother could not possibly be the reason why he
couldn’t stand himself anymore and ended his worthless life. Chabad and
OK Labs could not have a pedophile who died in a garage with nothing
but a dirty ash tray listed as a Shliachon there resume, it would have
a harsh negative effect on the future fundraising and financial
situation of Lubavitch and OK Kashrut. The unwritten Chabad rule of
placing the blame on the victim and covering up the damage and pain
caused by the child molester was immediately put in to action.

The second floor of the building houses a magnificent and truly
inspiring shul built by the Levy family in memory of Rabbi Levy’s
brother, Reb Eliezer Yitzchok Levy.

It will be known as “Beis Eliezer Yitzchok.”

I heard this story about a month ago from a former Crown Heights resident who was abused as a boy in Crown Heights. I'd give him a hat tip but this shaliach does not want to be named.

July 18, 2007

Screen shots from the new PETA video of slaughter in Rubashkin's Agriprocessors Local Pride plant in Gordon, Nebraska. The top picture is later in the sequence, the bottom a few frames earlier, showing a clean meat hook just before insertion into the animal's neck. Please click to enlarge.

An Australian Chabad rabbi signs a contact with the board of a synagogue. When the contract expires, the board asks the rabbi to leave. He refuses and tries to take the synagogue to beit din, claiming halakha grants him his position for life. The board won't go to beit din, a long fight ensues, the secular courts find for the synagogue and eventually the synagogue agrees to appear before the London, England beit din.

This story has received wide coverage over the past months, but I did not cover it because something about the story seemed amiss. Now I know what that something is.

Australian authorities have moved against a non-existent Jewish school, the Spirit of David academy, an afternoon Hebrew school. It received tens of thousands of state dollars fraudulently. The signatures on the report cards of the non-attending students? The Chabad rabbi, Yosef Engel. The Australian Jewish News reports:

FAKE report cards allegedly signed by Rabbi Yossi Engel are at the
centre of a major probe into claims an Adelaide school received
government money for phantom Hebrew lessons.

The reports, some of which have been sighted by the AJN, were lodged on
behalf of the Spirit of David Adelaide Hebrew School, which had its
registration suspended by South Australian education authorities last
month.

Angry parents this week said they were shocked to learn their children
– who attend regular Jewish and non-Jewish schools – had been used as
dummy enrolments for after-hours Hebrew tuition they didn’t know
existed.

“I never gave permission for my kids to attend classes I’d never even
heard of this school,” said Di Wittert, whose three sons were on Spirit
of David’s books without her knowledge.

Wittert only discovered the fakes when one of her sons moved to Massada
College from a state primary school this year, a transfer that turned
up academic records containing the false report card.

“The sad thing is our children have been robbed of the chance to have
legitimate Hebrew classes. We didn’t even know this option was
available to us,” she said.…

The AJN notes that no one involved in the case, including Rabbi Engel's attorney, have claimed those signatures are forged.

Earlier this week, the JTA reported that Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn had suddenly distanced itself from Rabbi Engel:

One Lubavitch insider, who spoke to JTA on condition of anonymity, said the saga was "tremendously embarrassing" for Chabad.

On the Web site of the worldwide Chasidic movement, the listing of Chabad centers in Australia includes a reference to "Chabad of South Australia." But the link has been removed – Chabad officials in the United States decided to sever themselves from Rabbi Engels' imbroglio, according to the Lubavitch source."It was felt that what he was doing was bringing discredit to the Chabad organization," he said.

So what is really happening on this new PETA video taken at Rubashkin's Gordon, Nebraska plant? I've spent the last few days doing some legwork, including a long interview with the OU's Rabbi Menachem Genack, the OU's head of shechita Rabbi Seth Mandel, Dr. Temple Grandin, the USDA and other insiders, and here's what seems to be the inside scoop.

Rabbi Genack was unable to tell me why the non-Jewish worker probed inside the neck of the animal after shechita. He referred me to Rabbi Seth Mandel, assuring me that Rabbi Mandel "speaks for the OU."

Rabbi Mandel told me the following:

The probing is done to separate the trachea from the esophagus.

It is done at the request of the USDA.

It is not done as part of the kosher slaughter process and is not a second cut.

It is not done at the OU's request.

It is not done at Rubashkin's request.

It is completely humane.

The animals feel no pain.

The animals are not conscious.

When I challenged him about this, he said there are "conflicting" studies. I pointed out that experts are unanimous in agreeing these particular animals are still conscious. He then said, if PETA were "serious" about protecting animals, they would "pay for a study" to show when animals become unconscious. That they have not is a sign that PETA's "agenda" is "anti-shechita."

I pointed out that any such study would involve killing animals, and PETA will not do this.

Rabbi Mandel then said that PETA "goes after" shechita.

I pointed out the dozens of other campaigns PETA has run that have nothing to do with shechita or Judaism.

He then asked why PETA was focusing on Rubashkin. Doesn't this focus prove an anti-shechita bais?

I told him that, after the Postville scandal, what would you expect PETA to do? Stop looking? Close their eyes?

The head of the shochtim (rosh hashochtim) is an employee of Agriprocessors and is paid by Rubashkin, not the OU.

Rabbi Mandel refused to give me his name without first getting permission from Rubashkin.

The USDA's FSIS chief spokesman Steven Cohen, when told that the OU claims this procedure is mandated by the USDA and approved by the USDA, told me that "the USDA does not interfere in ritual slaughter." He was unaware of this particular procedure and believed it to be part of the shechita process.

Dr. Temple Grandin told me that there is no such USDA-mandated procedure and that she has never seen anything like it done at any other kosher plant. She also insists the "instrument" used to probe the neck is a small meat hook. "It should be in the boning room used to move pieces of meat. It should not be on the kill floor."

She tells me the animals would feel pain and that "you should not even put a pencil in there" until the animal is insensate.

Another USDA and kosher slaughter insider told me there is a mandated USDA procedure called Weasand, which is the tying of the esophagus to prevent the stomach contents from coming up. He also said the "instrument" looks like a hook.

So what is happening at Agriprocessors Gordon plant?

In October of 2003 a meeting was held in the USDA between Agudath Israel of America, rabbis from various kosher supervising agencies and senior USDA officials including, according to some reports given me, Ann Veneman, the then-Secretary of Agriculture. The rabbis complained about the wording of a new USDA Humane Slaughter directive that outlawed "sawing." They were afraid USDA inspectors would stop slaughter lines because they would mistakenly view a shechita cut as "sawing."

The outcome of that meeting was a new directive (some say the wording of this new directive came from Nathan Lewin, Rubashkin's attorney and a Agudah operative) that prevented line inspectors from stopping ritual slaughter lines without first gaining approval of a regional USDA office. This was understood by some inspectors to mean, "Keep your hands off the rabbis and let them do whatever they want."

Indeed, one can see a USDA inspector in the new PETA Rubashkin video. He does not stop the line.

Whatever Rubashkin's employees are doing with that meat hook, US law prohibits doing any butchering or preparatory work on an animal until it is dead. The definition of death is the legal definition, not the halakhic definition some use that, once the knife begins to cut the animal is dead.

So what is really going on in Gordon?

You can see that a meat hook is used. You get a clear shot of it during the penultimate slaughter. (Click on the photo to the right for an enlargement. Another picture can be seen here, as well.)

Whatever the reason for its use, it is illegal and it must be immediately stopped.

The Jerusalem district prosecutor's office announced Wednesday that it was ready to issue indictments indict in what has been called the "rabbis' case".

"The Justice Ministry along with the National Fraud Unit (NFU), Military Police and the Police Investigation Unit (PIU), has conducted a comprehensive, complex, four-year investigation into the fraudulent ordination of military and police personnel as rabbis," a statement by the ministry said.

Since 1999, and as part of the Ministry of Education's wage agreement with the Teacher's Association, the ministry has acknowledged "advanced religious studies" accompanied by a rabbi's certificate of ordination as grounds for additional pay benefits.

Various educational facilities aimed at training armed forces personnel as rabbis were soon established. Student at these schools were ordained by the Chief Rabbinate, making them eligible for pay benefits.

"Following a lead given to the ministry, the Department of Financial Crime in the NFU began investigating senior members at the rabbinate as well as those attending the schools providing rabbinical certifications," said the statement.

"The evidence gathered revealed that some of the suspects formed 'colleges' where armed forces personnel attended religious studies classes… with the cooperation of the Chief Rabbinate's director of ordinations, the suspects received false documents stating they graduated a five-year program in a yeshiva licensed to ordain rabbis.

"These documents were presented to their superiors (in the armed forces), making them eligible for benefits reaching hundreds of millions of shekels."

Hundreds of millions in damages

Said benefits range from $500-$1,000 a month, dating back to 2001. The Justice Ministry estimated the monetary damage to the State in millions, adding that "had this continued, the damage could have gone well into the billions."

All payments were ceased and the ministry is looking into demanding the funds be returned retroactively.

The ministry's statement further revealed that several senior member of the Chief Rabbinate were questioned under advisement, including Meir Rosenthal, head of Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger's office, Yitzhak Ohana, head of Rabbi Israel Meir Lau's office and former director of ordinations at the Chief Rabbinate, former chief police Rabbi Yaacob Gross and deputy chief police Rabbi Aharon Gutsinder.

Other suspects include the owners of the three colleges providing false certifications.

Some 1,500 policemen, military officers and Israel Prison Service officers were questioned as well.

The case, said the Justice Ministry, is assumed to yield dozens of indictments and over a 100 disciplinary complaints against those implicated in the case.

The PIU is considering filing criminal charges against 80 police officers and disciplinary complaints against an additional 120.

Recommendations regarding suspects in the rabbinate and the regular army are to be made by the military's Judge Advocate General.

A "Jewish" charity site bills itself as the JCC (Jewish Charity Center). It's logo looks disturbingly like a real JCC (Jewish Community Centers) logo. It has a large banner ad on Ynet. The site claims:

Jewish Charity Center was developed by a team of marketing professionals who recognized the power of the Internet to dramatically change the world of Jewish Philanthropy and how the public chooses where they donate and which organizations they support.

Through a user-friendly interface, the Jewish Charity Center introduces visitors to all the information they need to make informed decisions about where and how they contribute their time and charity. The Jewish Charity Center is designed to usher the ancient commandment of charity into the twenty-first century.

While the charities featured on this site may vary from time to time, the Jewish Charity Center makes an effort to review the activities and use-of funds of the listed organizations to help ensure their legitimacy and honesty and that they subscribe to the core ideals of helping Jews in need. The Jewish Charity Center is here to offer two primary services:

To offer you, the visitor, choices and information about how you can help the Jewish Community and Israel.

To offer worthy Charities, supporting the Jewish nation and the Jewish people, a platform from which they can tell you, the reader, about their worthy cause.

None of the listed charities has a working link its own website or to other information about it and no other information about these or any other charities is provided on the site.

The purpose of the site seems to be to get people to sign up for a raffle giving away one free trip to Israel – in other words, to harvest email addresses and other contact information of committed Jews.

Other than an email address, there is no contact information given and no names of officers, board members, etc.

J Media Group provides you direct access into over 100 of the top Jewish
targeted newspapers nationwide. J Media Group is a division of Gemstone
Communications, Inc., which has been successfully representing grassroots, community based media since 1977.
The readership of the J Media Group newspaper network takes your message into
an affluent, educated community and family focused marketplace. Our newspaper
network offers the perfect environment for the brand to consumer introduction
and invitation. We reach the Jewish community in their markets and in their media – Media
to Motivate™Offering market and publication flexibility combined with complete 360° service
fulfillment including a one contact, one order, one invoice system – J
Media Group
is your partner for Jewish targeted media placement.

I don't think so. I think a group of scammers has found a great way to get the contact information and perhaps credit card numbers of a very valuable group of people. What will they do with this list? <s>We may never find out</s>.

UPDATE: I contacted several Jewish charities listed on the Jewish Charity Center site. None knew about the site or were involved with it in any way. Eventually, after several tries, I was able to get the head of the J Media Group, Jess Dolgin on the phone.

Here's what he said:

The site is a for-profit site intended to promote Jewish charities.

Any charity can pay to have a listing. That listing will include either a link to that charity's website or a link to a webpage created by J Media for that charity – the choice is the charity's.

The page listing Jewish charities is not the paid section of the website. It will not contain links to these charities.

J Media is removing the Hebrew Christian missionary organizations from that webpage and from the entire site.

The idea behind JCC is to provide a clearinghouse for Jewish charities.

It also allows smaller charities to gain visibility. How? By pooling the advertising dollars of many charities into one highly visible campaign.

Jess Dolgin dismisses any questions about using "JCC." He told me to Google it with him. I did. He began to read the listings, skipping the first four listings, all traditional Jewish Community Centers.

The email list gathered from the Israel trip giveaway will be used by charities (that pay the JCC) for occasional email campaigns.

Dolgin says his company was using the name J Media Group for a long time before they realized the AJPA had a J Media Group.

He says the AJPA's J Media Group is not a registered name.

In respone to my questioning, the JCC has added the following text to the charity listings page: "List of additional Jewish non profit organizations[:] This list is supplied for the reader’s convenience and does not claim to be comprehensivenor imply any connection between the organizations listed below and the Jewish Charity Center(Please contact us if you notice any errors or omissions)"

July 17, 2007

Yated Ne'eman, the official mouthpiece of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and the Lithuanian haredim that make up 1/2 of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) political party, 'reports' the rabbi MK - attorney incident this way:

…The incident took place during a heated exchange in the hallway outside the committee meeting rooms over the amount of funding the State should provide educational institutions whose students do not study all of the subjects required by the Core Curriculum Program.

Irate over de Hartoch's remarks, Rabbi Cohen said, "Why do you lie to us? Why do you scheme against us? You're destroying the Torah world."

"You're an animal," de Hartoch replied. "You're like the Germans."

Rabbi Cohen responded to de Hartoch's harsh words by saying, "What you're doing is like the Germans who wanted to destroy the body and soul."

"Stop talking like that," said de Hartoch. "You don't know me. I'll give you a smack."

"Let's see you," said Rabbi Cohen.

At that point de Hartoch failed to control his rage and slapped the MK very hard across the face. A security guard standing nearby held de Hartoch against the wall and summoned security personnel, who held the attorney for questioning.

MK Rabbi Cohen was stunned by what happened. "Even my father never hit me that hard," he said as he was receiving treatment. "I saw stars and everything went black. Everyone was shocked. He is a threat to the public. I call on the Justice Minister to dismiss him."…

This is a near-complete fabrication that flies in the face of not only eyewitness reports but of the testimony given by the rabbi MK to the police and to the media.

The attorney never said: "You're like the Germans."

By all other accounts including the rabbi's, the rabbi MK himself said to the attorney, "You are worse than Germans" (and, by some accounts, also telling the attorney, "You're a Nazi!). That prompted the slap.

So why do haredim lie? They lie because they can get away with it, because there are no penalties for deceit while there are many benefits, like keeping their followers under control.

Yated publishes nothing without permission of haredi leadership,
leadership under the direct control of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv

If anyone doubted the evil that is Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, read those lies, and realize that demonizing the Other, lying, stealing, fraud and deceit all come with Rabbi Elyashiv's twisted imprimatur.

Dr. Shapiro is Modern Orthodox, active in his community and a teacher at the popular Toronto-based Torah In Motion series currently under haredi attack. Rabbi Leff is a haredi polemicist and an alumnus of Teshe Yeshiva. Dr. Shapiro is a widely published scholar; Rabbi Leff is not.

Still, the OU saw nothing wrong with assigning the review of Dr. Shapiro's book to a haredi polemicist or in publishing a smear against Dr. Shapiro.

Dan Rabinowitz and Menachem Butler, editors of the Seforim Blog, gave Dr. Shapiro a chance to respond. Dr. Shapiro begins this way:

1. He writes “The
Chatam Sofer in his responsa (Yoreh Deah 356) cites a source even older
than Rambam who refers to Thirteen Principles of Faith.” As I noted in
the book (p. 36 n. 176) the Hatam Sofer was mistaken about this. The
source he refers to was actually composed by R. Yom Tov Lipmann
Muelhausen (14th-15th cent.) and has recently been published. (I also
point out that in another responsum, Even ha-Ezer
II, no. 148, Hatam Sofer himself realizes that the source we are
talking about has nothing to do with the Thirteen Principles which, he
acknowledges, originate with Rambam.)
The fact that R. Leff could include such a sentence, even though I
showed it to be incorrect, leaves me with some doubts as to how closely
he read my book.…

Dr. Shapiro goes on to show mistake after mistake made by Rabbi Leff, along with what clearly appear to be lies of omission told by Rabbi Leff, including this one:

I quoted sources that indicate that the notion of tikkun soferim is to be taken literally. Among these sources are Midrash Tanhuma and Yalkut ha-Makhiri (as well as the Arukh and a number of other texts which R. Leff does not mention, leaving the reader with the wrong impression).

Rabbi Leff then goes on to attack the Midrash Tanhuma as a source for Dr. Shapiro's argument, leaving out the other sources Dr. Shapiro quoted – sources that can not be refuted. And the Tanhuma 'refutation'? It really is not one, as Dr. Shapiro notes:

[Rabbi Leff] writes: “What Dr. Shapiro fails to mention is that those portions of
the Tanchuma and Yalkut are not found in most early editions.” Let’s
assume that this is correct (although to prove this one would need to
actually examine the manuscripts, not simply refer to two apologetic
comments found in the standard rabbinic commentary to Tanhuma).
This would make perfect sense, as later copyists would be inclined to
leave out that which they regarded as controversial or even heretical.
What then does this prove?

Furthermore, the sources R. Leff mentions are only referring to Tanhuma. Neither of them mention anything about Yalkut ha-Makhiri.
Of course, I am sure that he will also assert that this text is a
forgery, or was written by a “mistaken student,” and will do the same
with any other text that presents an alternate understanding of tikkun soferim.

What Rabbi Leff has done is reprehensible. What the OU has done by publishing this hit piece, and by not giving Dr. Shapiro a chance to respond in situ to Rabbi Leff's smear is far, far worse.

Is Modern Orthodoxy sliding to the right, to borrow a term from Professor Samuel Heilman? Sure it is.

The Beadle, leafing through his copy of the new Hamodia (not available online), the Gerrer hasidim-controlled Jewish weekly, spotted this blatant lie by omission in Hamodia's coverage of the Knesset slap:

Rabbi Cohen later said that he only thought that De Hartuch was threatening him with a slap, and he didn’t think that De Hartuch intentions were real.

At this point De Hartuch viciously smashed his fist into Rabbi Cohen’s face throwing him a meter and a half.

That's right. No mention of the "You are worse than the Germans" remark that caused the attorney to slap the rabbi MK, even though the rabbi had already admitted saying it and many eyewitnesses heard it. (Some also heard him refer to the attorney as a Nazi.)

Worse yet, the rabbi admits here that he did not think the attorney would really slap him so, like all true bullies, he goaded the attorney, making himself look tough while really thinking himself safe and free from any danger.

Hamodia then turns the slap into a punch, even though no eyewitness saw anything other than a slap, and the rabbi MK is previously on record describing the assault as a slap.

Hamodia is controlled by the Gerrer Rebbe, who also controls the part of UTJ the rabbi MK – himself a Gerrer hasid – represents.

July 16, 2007

Touro College, which describes itself as a school operating under Jewish auspices, is in effect a haredi version of Yeshiva University, a few steps up from a degree mill but considerably weaker academically than YU. Late today a NY grand jury issued 10 indictments in a cash for grades and cash for transcripts scheme that began operating at least as far back as 2003.

The New York Times has some details, including a mention of the older fraud, but a more detailed report can be read here:

A New York City Grand Jury has indicted 10 individuals for their involvement in a scheme to create and sell fraudulent student transcripts at a local college based in Manhattan. Some of the defendants charged in the indictment include the former director of admissions and the former director of the computer center for Touro College, three students who attended Touro College, as well as three New York City Public School teachers. In February 2007, Touro College reported the case to the Computer Crimes Squad, New York Police Department, which referred the case to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Baron was the former director of admissions for Touro College, New York School of Career and Applied Studies in Manhattan (1994–2007) and Cherner was the former director of the Computer Center for Touro College, Kings Highway, Brooklyn campus (1990-2007).

The indictment charges that from approximately Jan. 8 to March 31, Baron and Cherner improperly altered, created, and deleted at least seven transcripts in a cash-for-grades scheme. At least three of the altered records belonged to current Touro students, whose existing records were enhanced with improved grades or additional or deleted courses.…

Prosecutors says Baron and Cherner also accepted bribes from at least four individuals who never attended Touro, but paid for fraudulent transcripts. Three of these individuals were New York City Department of Education teachers who needed master’s degrees to obtain permanent certification.Prosecutors says Baron and Cherner also accepted bribes from at least four individuals who never attended Touro, but paid for fraudulent transcripts. Three of these individuals were New York City Department of Education teachers who needed master’s degrees to obtain permanent certification.…

On the bright side, when Touro officials noticed the fraud, they called the police.

On the bad side, the New York Times reports that Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said:

[T]he investigation was continuing, adding that he believed that
hundreds, maybe even thousands, of transcripts may have been fabricated
or altered.

Touro may be best known in the Jewish world for granting credit for yeshiva studies. Students studying in Aish HaTorah and other haredi ba'al teshuva yeshivas have received college credit through Touro for those studies, as have students of other, non-BT haredi yeshivot in Israel. It is also well-known as the place haredim go when they need a quick degree.

Kosher Today in its new issue sent today (and not yet online) accuses PETA of doctoring evidence:

KosherToday in an exclusive report has learned that the PETA Web site
doctored a photo of a box used in the kosher slaughter of animals. The
box in the photo was never used at the plant.

PETA's Matt Prescott, responding for PETA VP Bruce Friedrich, tells me that the photo in question (seen to the right here and taken from Yeshiva World) never appeared on PETA's Rubashkin investigation website and that the photo appeared on Yeshiva World. Prescott noted that PETA has a firm policy never to doctor photos, video, or other evidence.

But it is more complicated than that. I traced the picture to Answers.com. Answers.com lists the source of the picture as Dr. Temple Grandin, the noted expert on slaughter (see several interviews with her linked on the sidebar of this page). The picture is clearly labeled as "Cattle restrained for stunning just prior to slaughter." The image is copyrighted and may only be used if the owner, Temple Grandin, is acknowledged and the image description is properly credited. Yeshiva World did neither.

In other words, Yeshiva World took the picture without attribution and now either Menachem Lubinsky is lying (or mistaken) or Yeshiva World is lying (or mistaken). No surprise in either case, I'm afraid.

UPDATE 7-17-07: The Yeshiva World News editor contacted me regarding this post. He was unaware of the source of the picture, claiming it was sent to him via email by a regular tipster. He did not mean for the photo placement to imply that the photo was from PETA or its website. He has now credited the photo on his website and noted correctly that it is a picture of an animal restrained immediately prior to stunning. He tells me he also contacted PETA and apologized.

Kosher Today, the Kosher food industry's trade publication, today reports on the latest Rubashkin scandal. (This is not online yet; what follows is the email version.) As usual for Kosher Today, which is run by Menachem Lubinsky, a paid consultant who works regularly for Rubashkin, misrepresents the story. It also fails again to disclose the financial and personal relationship between Lubinsky and Rubashkin:

BREAKING NEWS: New PETA Video Against Schechita Irks the IndiansGordon, NE... When Agriprocessors agreed to operate a shuttered meat plant two years ago, it was hailed as an act of extreme kindness by the Oglala Sioux Tribe living on the Prime Ridge Reservation. The plant had closed in 1996 leaving many of the Tribe's members unemployed. In fact, President Bill Clinton in a visit to the reservation cited the area's 75% unemployment, which led to the creation of The Oglala Oyate Woitancan Empowerment Zone. When it reopened as Local Pride, owned by the Rubashkin family of Postville, IA, the plant employed 80 of the Tribe's members. A new illegal video by the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA) alleging inhumane treatment of animals at the plant was immediately dismissed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Officials as well as rabbis confirmed that all procedures at the plant were in full compliance with halacha (Jewish law) as well as US law. PETA has continued to target Agriprocessors as part of what many rabbis believe is an attempt to discredit and possibly ban schechita in the US. But the sharpest words for PETA came from John W. Steele, the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe: "A year ago, we celebrated Local Pride's one-year anniversary with Governor Heineman and over 500 of our neighbors. Now, on Local Pride's second anniversary, we find our success under attack by political extremists who care nothing for our area, our people or the community we are trying to build." Mr. Steele continued: "despite the fact that PETA's political operatives lied and trespassed to gain access to the plant, the USDA investigated PETA's allegations and found no violations of the Humane Slaughter Act. If PETA's real concern was the treatment of animals at Local Pride, instead of their radical agenda to end the eating of meat and the owning of animals, it should have dropped the matter. Instead, dissatisfied with the USDA's conclusion, PETA has asked the Sheridan County Attorney to investigate and has launched a national media campaign with a bull's-eye painted on Local Pride and Gordon." KosherToday in an exclusive report has learned that the PETA Web site doctored a photo of a box used in the kosher slaughter of animals. The box in the photo was never used at the plant. Attorney Nathan Lewin, who has defended AgriProcessors in the past, told the Forward, that the new video "proves that PETA is out to destroy or make unlawful" kosher slaughter.

Steele's assertion that the USDA "investigated PETA's allegations and found no violations of the Humane Slaughter Act" does not mean no violations took place. It means that, after announcing their intention to inspect the plant, the subsequent inspection found no violations. This is like warning a massage parlor that the police will be inspecting your operation in a few days, and then noting that, because the police found no prostitution at the parlor, no prostitution had ever taken place there. That is why the USDA was quick to retract its quote, found only in the AP rush article on the scandal, that no violations were found. The USDA, from last Monday evening onward, has insisted that it is conducting an ongoing investigation into alleged Humane Slaughter violations at this Rubashkin plant , and that the AP article did not accurately portray the agency's attitude toward the alleged violations.

The claim that PETA, "dissatisfied with the USDA's conclusion," has asked the Sheridan county attorney to prosecute, is also misleading. PETA asked local Iowa prosecutors to prosecute Rubashkin shortly after the 2004 scandal broke, while the USDA's investigation was ongoing. Why? Because states have their own animal cruelty laws and their own jurisdictional responsibilities. It is also true that the Bush Administration has reduced USDA enforcement and oversight to new lows. (Search USDA in the FailedMessiah searchbar for three years worth of coverage on this.)

And then we have this:

A new illegal video by the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals
(PETA) alleging inhumane treatment of animals at the plant was
immediately dismissed by the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA). Officials as well as rabbis confirmed that all procedures at
the plant were in full compliance with halacha (Jewish law) as well as
US law.

Who are the "officials" mentioned by Kosher Today? Who knows. Whoever they are, they do ot represent the FSIS or its investigation.

Here are some questions to pose to your local Orthodox rabbis, the OU and other Kosher supervision agencies (including the Saint Paul, Minnesota-based United Mehadrin Kosher):

Is it kosher to probe an animal's shechita wound with a meat hook a few seconds after shechita and before the animal has lost consciousness, bled out and died?

Is it kosher to cut off a portion of an animal's ear a few seconds after shechita and before the animal has lost consciousness, bled out and died?

If either or both acts are kosher but cause pain to the animal, does the resulting pain (tzaar in Hebrew) violate tzaar baalei hayyim law?

If it does, does that violation render the meat unkosher?

Does it make a difference if most animals at Rubashkin are treated this way, making the suffering a halakhic certainty?

The OU pledged in 2005 to stop using a meat hook on the throats' of animals, yet we see that pledge has not been kept. How does this effect the OU's trustworthiness with regard to kashrut?

What I think most rabbis will tell you is as follows:

Yes, but it's better not to.

Yes, but it's better not to.

No. The animal is halakhicly dead from the time the knife first begins to cut.

No.

That's a complicated question that will take some research to answer properly. Can I get back to you?

I'm not familiar enough with the details of this to comment.

And then you will hear much about PETA's 'campaign' against shechita, Nazis and animal welfare, first they ban shechita, then they kill Jews, etc. Rabbis are nothing if not expert beclouders of sensitive issues.

By the way, although he does not look the part, many sources have told me that Menachem Lubinsky is a Gerrer hasid, active in his community and close to the Gerrer Rebbe. (So is the rabbi MK who provoked the slap in Knesset.)

More on the the "doctored" picture shortly.

UPDATE: The picture in question was stolen from Dr. Temple Grandin and Answers.com and used in violation of the copyright agreement by The Yeshiva World.

July 15, 2007

…Earlier this year, the North Rochdale house was found to be home to
more than five people and did not have a fire-suppression sprinkler
system, according to Community Affairs. A settlement was reached in
June, resulting in a $2,000 fine, discontinuing its use as a dormitory,
vacating the site by July 6 and not allowing any more individuals at
the house in the meantime, according to Community Affairs.

Within
weeks of the settlement, the North Rochdale Avenue house again, along
with the two on Homestead Lane, were found to be operating as
unapproved dormitories, according to Community Affairs.

The three houses had more than five people living in each, no sprinkler systems, and had illegal and unsafe electrical work…

Teenage children, some as young as 13, packed tightly in unsafe,
unregulated wood frame houses in violation of state law.Why? They
attend a boarding school and these unsafe structures are their
dorms

What group of people would do this? Hindus? Buddhists? Seventh Day Adventists? Atheists?

Of course not. Who is it, then? Why, shock of all shocks, haredim, the only group with specific religious laws preventing, on the books, at least, this type of reckless endangerment and disregard for secular law.

According to this report, Me'on Hatorah yeshiva of Roosevelt, New Jersey is a branch of Telshe (AKA, Telz) Yeshiva. They got their foothold in Roosevelt by leasing space from Congregation Anshei Roosevelt synagogue in what appears to be a convoluted deal that inappropriately benefited the town's mayor, who also happened to be the president of the synagogue.

More on that deal here, along with an allegation that the mayor got the yeshiva to rent space from the synagogue he presided over with a promise that the town's lone public school would soon be declared non-viable and its building vacated, at which point the yeshiva would take it over.

They don't understand that barring entry to an honest man like
Hartog is an insult to the Knesset, not to Hartog. Many of us are
responsible for the fact that he broke down, and we will all pay the
price for the slap on the face.

No
profound understanding of human nature is necessary to understand that
the slap delivered by Amnon De Hartog - the Justice Ministry official
who approves support for public institutions - to MK Yakov Cohen
reflected serious distress. For 15 years Hartog has guarded the public
coffers and has fought our battles. And when last year he endured an
unremitting offensive led by MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism, he
remained alone. Hartog is a very gentle man. When he slapped Cohen on
the face he found an unacceptable - and for him very uncharacteristic -
way of making clear that this nightmare cannot continue.

The
Knesset presidency barred Hartog from entering the building for the
rest of his life. The truth is that had this punishment been imposed a
day earlier, he would have considered it a prize. In recent months, his
every visit to the Knesset could turn into a nightmare. Every time he
appeared before a committee he could expect [personal] attacks by ultra-Orthodox
MKs, and particularly Gafni. Gafni did not hesitate to insult him and
accuse him of working for the benefit of national religious education,
because his children study there.

Many people in the Knesset
thought it was a scandal, but nobody did anything about it, especially
not the heads of the committees that were supposed to restrain Gafni.
Hartog's big mistake was that he did not refuse to come to the Knesset.
The Ethics Committee discussed the subject last Monday, and like a
trade union that protects its members, it didn't even reprimand Gafni.
What they don't understand in the Knesset is that barring entry to an
honest man like Hartog is an insult to the Knesset, not to Hartog.

The
ultra-Orthodox press conducted a propaganda campaign against Hartog,
and published pictures of him repeatedly. Hartog, a very religious man,
lives in a mixed neighborhood with both Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox
residents. There were synagogues in the neighborhood where they refused
to pray with him. And let it be clear: When Hartog fought against
ultra-Orthodox institutions, he did so from a halakhic standpoint,
which found it incomprehensible that religious people could steal and
receive money fraudulently.

It is not unusual that the ultra-
Orthodox use Holocaust-related terms when attacking someone they see as
their enemy. For Hartog these attacks hit a sensitive nerve. His
father, a Holocaust survivor, died a few months ago. He didn't
understand how one could say such things about someone whose parents
survived the Holocaust. Every noble act by Hartog was interpreted
negatively by the ultra-Orthodox. Two years ago he fought to have
children in a Hadera ultra-Orthodox school removed from a building next
to a high-tension wire. The ultra-Orthodox depicted this as a war
against ultra- Orthodox education.

There are people who can
say they sounded a warning. Haaretz reporter Yuval Yoaz, for example,
published an article about Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann, who
abandoned Hartog. And an attorney, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, filed a complaint
to the Ethics Committee against Gafni. But what about the approximately
100 MKs who are not ultra-Orthodox, many of whom witnessed the attack
and remained silent? What about the attorney general's staff, who did
not understand that in the end Hartog would break down? What about the
organizations fighting for good government, which did not come to his
defense? What about the rest of the press, which did not fulfill its
role in defending the man who safeguarded the money that belongs to all
of us? What about me, who was the person most familiar with Hartog's
work, and still did not think to sound a warning?

Many of us
are responsible for the fact that Amnon De Hartog broke down, and we
will all pay the price for the slap on the face; both with the money
that will now flow without interference to non-government organizations
that should not receive it, and with a marked increase in the level of
corruption. Some people are irreplaceable. Hartog is one of them.

The LA Archdiocese has agreed to pay $660 million to settle the abuse claims against it. It also has agreed to open the files of abusive priests and made other concessions. The total amount paid in abuse settlements by the US Church so far is $2 billion. Five dioceses — Tucson, Ariz.; Spokane, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Davenport, Iowa, and San Diego — are in bankruptcy. 500 lawsuits still remain unsettled.

Why do I post this? Because, with luck, within a few years you will read a similar article about Agudah, Torah Umesorah, the OU, and various other haredi groups.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Beit Shemesh is a "ticking bomb" about to explode:

…"Callers
have issued death threats and [Beit Shemesh police chief oz] Elyasi's nine-year-old daughter suffered
from shock as a result of demonstrations outside the Elyasi home," she
said.

The spokeswoman also denied claims by haredi residents that
Elyasi personally beat demonstrators after they were detained. She
rejected claims by haredim that Elyasi's style of policing, unlike that
of his predecessors, has exacerbated the tense relationship between the
municipality and the haredi community.

"There were always problems in Beit Shemesh," said the
spokeswoman. "These incidents are nothing new." However, a shop owner
in the Casbah who preferred to remain anonymous said that both Elyasi
and the haredim were to blame.

"Retired police who worked with Elyasi told me that the guy
lacks communication skills," said the store owner. "He resorts to force
instead of negotiating a compromise.

"Meanwhile, the haredim throw rocks and they spill oil in the
road to cause cars to slide out of control. I saw them throw tomatoes
at a female soldier who walked through the neighborhood in slacks. On
another occasion, an Egged bus driver who [had been] stoned got out of
his bus, pulled out a pistol and fired warning shots into the air.

"To tell you the truth," he confided, "if I were that bus driver, I wouldn't shoot in the air. I would shoot one of them."

The Post notes that the haredim here do not take state aide for housing, but they do pay municipal taxes. Even so, these haredim are a tremendous drain on municipal resources, are a real and present danger to non-haredim, and do not do anything to help national security, either by serving in the IDF or by doing national service.

Worse yet, they believe they are above the law and any attempts by the state to get them to follow the law are viewed by the haredim as attacks on Judaism itself.

What the Post describes is what Muslim fundamentalism was like in its infancy.

How the Muslim fundamentalism was handled can be instructive. Countries that left their fundamentalists alone in the hopes that they would moderate with time ended up with weeks of riots, murders and violence (France, for example). Countries that banished or jailed their fundamentalists remained largely stable (Iran before the fall of the Shah; Egypt until today; Tunisia).

Israel is following the French model. It (largely) leaves haredim alone, allows them to cheat, steal, evade national service, wall themselves off from larger society and , most importantly, allows their criminals – child abusers, rapists, thieves, white collar crooks and blue collar thugs – to receive special, preferential treatment ranging from no jail time (or, even more often, no arrest), better jail conditions, and softer sentences.

When a local police chief decides to treat haredi crime like it treats all other crime, haredim riot. In Beit Shemesh, the police chief is apparently a man of few words and great wrath and his misbehaviors, if true, will only provoke more haredi violence.

If police enforcement is handled firmly but correctly, if the courts react with firmness, haredi violence will cease, because their street thugs and, eventually, their leaders will end up in jail.

Israeli police are too corrupt and too incompetent for that, and Israeli politicians lack the will to stand up to the thugs of Mea Shearim and Bnei Brak or to their leaders.

One day, perhaps very soon, Israel will wake up to riots on a scale larger than it has ever before seen. The streets of Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Tzfat, Bnei Brak and other cities will be in flames.

Israeli political leaders will cave in because, in Israel's fractured and tortuous political system, Kadima, Labor and Likud all need haredi votes to remain in power.

But the people of Israel will not stand for this. Eventually, they will chose to act, either through a new anti-haredi political party or through violence of their own.

If the latter option is taken, Israel will erupt into civil war. And where that will lead is anyone's guess and everyone's fear.

July 13, 2007

A 37-year-old deputy battalion commander in the IDF reserves is mad as hell, and he is not going to take it any longer. He has already served more than a month of reserve duty this year alone, with more duty on the near horizon. And, next year won't be any easier:

Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe
Kaplinsky, said on Wednesday that due to the army's attempts to improve
itself after the Second Lebanon War the reserves have been heavily
burdened. Kaplinsky said that next year would also see reservists
contributing many days to training and service.

And all of this is without a war or a major pullback from the West Bank. If either event takes place, he's on the front lines until the war or the withdrawal is over.

He's been in the reserves for 16 years. He has almost lost jobs because of time spent in reserve duty. His family life has been disrupted. He, like so many other Israelis, give everything, give until it hurts, to protect the country and their families.

This deputy battalion commander is not mad because of all that. He is fighting mad for another reason – haredim who do not serve in the army.

Yesterday, the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs
Committee recommended the Tal Law – the piece of legislation that allows haredim to skip army service – be extended by an additional five years.

Disgusted that haredim are exempted from service while, at the same time reservists are burdened with many extra days away from their families and jobs, the deputy battalion commander took his ranks (bars in American parlance, denoting rank) from his uniform and sent them by mail along with a letter of resignation to a former colleague of mine, Tzahi Hanegbi, the head of the Knesset committee.

In other words, he resigned his commission. The deputy battalion commander wrote to the Knesset committee:

"I am handing in my ranks and ID to make it
clear to you all that I have no intention of being the nation's sucker.
I won't serve in the reserves any longer and if I am called up, I would
rather be locked up," [he] wrote.

"Your vote indicates that there is no longer
room for equality in shouldering the burden, especially during a year
like this one, which has been especially difficult for the reserves. At
such a time when we are under constant threat of another war, your vote
is testimony to your lack of respect for reserve soldiers," he wrote.…

"This loss of values … has made you unfit to even shine the shoes of the last
soldier in my battalion. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

Why does the Knesset keep giving haredim a free pass? That's simple. Because political parties like Likud, Kadima and Labor need the votes of haredi political parties like Shas and United Torah Judaism to remain in power.

But why do haredim keep demanding this special treatment, special treatment that unfairly burdens so many non-haredim? Because they can. And because they do not care about the rest of us.

Haredim claim their Torah study "protects" Israel. Some fight with guns, they say, we fight with books.

But these are not wars of choice but rather absolute national defense; no one is exempted (except for a tiny number of individuals based on individual exemptions having nothing to do with Torah study). When someone comes to kill you the proper response is not to daven ma'ariv or shteig over a gemara.

And certainly, when non-haredim suffer like this good soldier has suffered, the proper response should be to relieve his burden by serving in the IDF.

Of course, haredim will not do this. They will continue to sit in poverty and darkness, confident that the state will always cough up money, set asides and exemptions in the end.

And so it will be, until the day comes that many deputy battalion commanders, their soldiers and their superiors refuse to let it continue. And I think most of you can see where that will lead.

July 12, 2007

By now you know the story. The government attorney, son of Holocaust survivor and a observant Jew, is slandered by a haredi MK, a rabbi affiliated with the Gerrer hasidic sect, who accuses the attorney of being worse than the Nazis . The attorney warns the MK to stop or he'll slap the rabbi. The rabbi MK, tauntingly says, "I'm waiting." The attorney slaps him.

Writing in Ynet, haredi journalist Tali Farkash has this to say about the incident:

…What MK [Rabbi Yakov] Cohen said in rage was the essence of the Jewish experience in the world. It’s the spirit that’s important. The parent has the right to determine what his children learn in school. A parent who wants to leave the non-religious studies to the age of 20, as many in the religious public do, is entitled to do so. And no you, [attorney] Amnon [Dehartuch], or anyone else, are not allowed to slap him for this.

The haredi public is very protective of his children, and for a good reason. He will fight for the principle of the spirit, as he did in Masada and in medieval Europe. If it wasn’t for them and their bravery, where would we be today? The painful answer is that we would have been extinct, like the Moabites, the Canaanites and the ancient Egyptians. The inappropriate words were not said out of disrespect for the Holocaust, which I think also claimed the lives of many of Cohen’s family.

So people, we are 15 days away from Tisha B’Av and the clock is ticking. Tell me when will this ancient hatred die and we shall be free at last?…

What a load of crap.

The haredi rabbi called the son of a Holocaust survivor a Nazi, said he was worse than the Germans, and said he was anti-Torah. Haredi media and rabbis have been demonizing this attorney for years, all because he tries to enforce the law. The attorney, who is an Orthodox Jew, a yeshiva graduate affiliated with the National Religious movement, has blocked allocations for secular groups, National Religious groups, and haredi groups all based on the thing – equal enforcement of the law.

This rabbi surely meant no disrespect for the Holocaust, and no one has alleged that he did intend to disparage the Holocaust or Holocaust survivors. What the rabbi meant to do was demonize another religious Jew, and he did that rather well – and that is what he is being criticized for. That his curses do cheapen the meaning of the Holocaust is a byproduct of his shameful behavior, not its intended purpose.

Tali Farkash knows this very well, just as she knows the attorney did not slap the haredi MK rabbi becuase he doesn't want haredi children to study secular subjects in school – he slapped him because the rabbi called him a Nazi and worse than a Nazi.

Now Farkash leaves the area of poor logic and disingenuous argument and enters a fantasy world. Masada? Haredim were on Masada? With their kapotes and fur hats? The white knicker socks? Their rebbes and rosh yeshivas manning the ramparts? They were in Medieval Europe during the Crusades? Rashi, Rabbaynu Tam and the Hochmei Provence were haredim?

Please. Only someone wholly ignorant of history could make those claims. (Of course it is not surprising Farkash would make make those claims – she is a product of haredi schools, schools that do not teach science, math, civics or, you guessed it, history.)

Of course, the heart of her argument, that people have the right to educate their children as they see fit, is largely true. But societies have the right and obligation to set criteria for the education those societies pay for. If you do not want little Shmueli or little Raizy to learn algebra, basic science, civics, history and the like, fine. Don't 'pollute' their little minds until they're 20 (or older, or never, if the so-called gedolim get their way). Send them to private schools that do not teach those subjects. But do not expect the rest of us to pay for those private schools by funding them with our tax dollars.

Pay for your children's private education out of your own funds. If you don't have the money, ask for tzedaka (charity). Or home-school them.

How outlandish is it for haredim – who rarely serve in the army, who by choice do not work and therefore rely on welfare – how outlandish is it for these people to demand (note the word: demand) money to fund their non-compliant education in violation of the law?

"When," Farkash asks, will people be freed from this so-called "ancient hatred" of haredim? When haredim like Farkash stop lying to, cheating and defrauding the rest of us.

Royalty
rates for webcasters have been drastically increased
[disproportionately – the increase is much higher for Internet
broadcasters than for Satellite or regular radio] by a recent ruling
and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!).
If the increased rates remain unchanged, the majority of webcasters
will go bankrupt and silent on this date. Internet radio needs your
help!

What do these new regulations mean? They mean Internet broadcasters like Pandora will pay a lot more per song than radio stations or satellite broadcasters. This effectively destroys the small independent broadcasters that use the Web and gives unfair economic advantage to the mega media corporations that own most radio and satellite stations. This is anti-democracy, anti-free speech and decidedly Bush Republican.

July 11, 2007

Anshel Pfeffer has a column in today's Jerusalem post that confirms and expands on what I wrote yesterday and Monday. Pfeffer notes the years of haredi abuse heaped on the attorney, the disgusting treatment repeated over and over and over again, all because the state's attorney insists haredim operate within the law. Pfeffer also notes that this attorney regularly blocks state allocations to secular and National Religious institutions for the same reasons. He note that the attorney is dislike by Knesset members because his insistence on upholding the law makes their coalition wheeling and dealing more difficult.

And Pfeffer notes one other thing – the attorney, the son of a Holocaust survivor called "worse than the Germans" (or, "worse than the Nazis," as more recent reports have it) by a haredi rabbi MK, is a graduate of a hesder yeshiva and an observant Orthodox Jew.

The Knesset took this opportunity to permanently ban the attorney from the building, most likely in the hope of getting a more pliable (corrupt) replacement.

[In a separate JPost article, the argument between the haredi rabbi MK and the attorney is reported this way:

In the heat of the argument, Cohen told Dehartuch: "You are destroying the Torah world."

Dehartuch, who lost 20 relatives in the Holocaust, replied:
"You're an animal, shut your mouth," at which point Cohen exclaimed:
"You are worse than the Germans, you want to destroy the body and also
the soul."

An enraged Dehartuch then said: "If you don't shut your mouth, I'll give you a slap."

"Let's see then," Cohen goaded. Dehartuch complied, slapping him across the face.

According to Knesset officials present, Cohen also called Dehartuch "a Nazi." Cohen denied using the word.]

The Post goes on to note that the attorney's father passed away last year and that, while he survived the Holocaust, 20 members of his family did not

The OU's head of kashrut Rabbi Menachem Genack told the Forward that he had not yet "had the chance" to see the new PETA video but that the OU has sent an "inspector" to the Nebraska plant to check it out. Rabbi Genack also said that, from what he has learned “this is
nothing like the same story as Postville.”

What does this mean? Let me point out a few things and then you decide:

In the Forward article, Rabbi Genack admits that PETA contacted him about the newest abuses at Rubashkin's Gordon plant before contacting the media. My sources told me Monday that contact happened more than a week before PETA went public.

Rabbi Genack is currently on vacation. He was due back today but then sometime late Monday decided to take an extra day off.

Even though the video is very short, less than five minutes in duration, and widely available on the Internet, and even though PETA approached him days ago, Rabbi Genack could not find the time to view it.

The OU apparently has no presence at the Gordon plant, yet it puts its hechsher on the meat killed there.

The abuses at Gordon are less severe than the abuses at Postville because the animal is standing in Gordon and on its back in Postville. The extra fear and stress from upside down slaughter and from being flipped right side up and dumped onto a bloody floor immediately after slaughter extends the dying process.

Further, as bad as the shechita is in Gordon, what was passing for shechita (and may still be passing for shechita) in Postville is much worse. Why? Because of the design of the Weinberg Pen used for upside down slaughter in Postville. Shoctim, slaughterers, have to be very careful using the Weinberg Pen because its design makes it very easy to bring the knife in contact with the pen's metal, which causes damage to the blade and means that a shochet must spend a large amount of time repairing that damage and not shechting, slaughtering. This costs Rubashkin money and puts extreme pressure on the shochtim to avoid doing this. So shochtim make shallow cuts that protect their knives but often miss severing the carotids and jugulars of the animals.

In Gordon the extended dying time comes from poor quality shechita and bad animal handling immediately before and after shechita.

Rabbi Genack told me in a 2004 interview that meet hooks would not be used to excise the trachea and windpipe, and that a shochet would do the second cut, if a second cut was necessary.

Today, in researching the OU's position from that time, I ran across a quote from the JTA published in December of 2004. "O.U. officials told JTA on Tuesday that they will make two main
changes to slaughtering procedures followed by the plant, which
processes meat for the Rubashkin/Aaron’s Best label.

The plant no
longer will allow slaughterers to pull out a slaughtered animal’s
trachea in order to hasten death. Instead, an artery that supplies
blood to the brain will be severed on a second cut.

The Orthodox
Union also said it would look for a way to either kill or stun cows
that are still walking even after the initial stage of slaughtering."

As you can see in the new PETA video, a meat hook is used. The trachea and windpipe are not excised. Instead they are pulled aside and then the hook is used to hack the major blood vessels.

This may appear less gruesome but it is still a painful, illegal procedure.

Animals that remained conscious for up to two minutes were not put down by captive bolt, even though they should have been.

The OU appears to have no one in charge at Agriprocessors Gordon plant, yet its supervision seal is placed on the meat killed there.

Nat Lewin, a Washington lawyer who has defended AgriProcessors in
the past, said that the video does not show anything illegal or out of
the ordinary in slaughterhouses.

“All I can
conclude is that it proves that PETA is out to destroy or make unlawful
[kosher slaughter] in all its actual implementation,” Lewin said. “The
purpose of the video is to have people say, ‘Look, there is a man with
a beard and a long knife.’”

“We’ll put them on the wall with Hitler,” Nathan Lewin, an Orthodox Jew and a lawyer for Agriprocessors, said, referring to PETA.”

Meanwhile, leading Humane Slaughter expert Dr. Temple Grandin joined other leading experts in condemning the latest abuses from Rubashkin and the rabbis who endorse his products:

Among the critics of the new footage is animal rights expert Temple
Grandin, who was also a prominent critic of AgriProcessors after the
release of the 2004 video. She visited the Iowa plant last year, after
a series of reforms had been implemented, and gave it a clean bill of
health. Now, in response to the new footage, she is again criticizing
the company.

“They’re not working on fixing the
details of their procedure,” Grandin told the Forward. “Now, it’s
nowhere near as bad as the other AgriProcessors thing. I would label
that atrocious. This I would label poor.”

The USDA's FSIS spokesman Steven Cohen told me in an email Monday that the statement attributed to the USDA and reported by the AP on Monday afternoon, that the USDA sent an inspector to the plant and found no violations, "does not accurately represent the position of the agency."

Here's what the USDA told the Forward:

A spokesman for a branch of the United States Department of
Agriculture, Amanda Eamich, said that her agency had sent a
veterinarian to the Nebraska plant after receiving the PETA complaint.
Eamich said that her agency is “reviewing the procedures” at the
Nebraska plant but has not made any conclusions.

My sources tell me the OU knew about the PETA findings before the USDA sent its inspector. Rubashkin also had prior warning.

Last time around, the USDA sat on its internal report for almost one year. When it was forced into the open by PETA and the the media, it became clear why the USDA held the report. The USDA had ignored Humane Slaughter violations at Agriprocessors. Its inspectors played computer games while on duty, slept and took presents of cold cuts and beef from Rubashkin.

What will come of these latest Humane Slaughter violations? Not much is my guess. Orthodox Jews has proved that issues of tzaar baalei hayyim, animal cruelty, don't matter much (if at all) to them or to the rabbis who provide kosher supervision. Non-Orthodox Jews largely do not keep kosher. Those who do rely on Orthodox rabbis for their meat because there is no other option.

The Conservative Movement's so-called tzedek hechsher is plodding along at a slow pace. And my impression is that its rabbis are more concerned with making sure their kosher-keeping members have access to kosher beef than they are to any tzaar baalei hayyim issues surrounding its production.

The USDA is perhaps the most corrupt agency in the federal government. Its current head is the former Republican governor of Nebraska, the state where these latest Rubashkin violations took place.

Expect little to come from the USDA's 'review' of its procedures, and expect little, if any, change from your rabbis.

If you want to keep kosher, keep kosher. But realize the hamburgers sold at McDonald's are produced in a much more humane and ethical way than the glatt kosher burger you're fressing on.

Yesterday's post on a Justice Ministry attorney who slapped a haredi MK in the Knesset has been fleshed out by a new Ha'aretz report on the incident and its aftermath. Key points:

The attorney is the official in charge of approving government budget allocations to private schools.

He had blocked allocations to haredi schools because, as I reported yesterday, the haredi schools do not teach the required core curriculum mandated by law.

Haredi newspapers and media outlets had vilified the attorney over the past several weeks because of this.

The incident started in the committee meeting when the haredi MK harshly and personally criticized the attorney.

The haredi MK, Rabbi Yakov Cohen, told the attorney – whose family fled the Nazis and whose family suffered greatly during the Holocaust – that he was "more evil and terrible than the Nazis." A part of the attorney's family was murdered at Auschwitz.

As noted yesterday, haredim do not as a rule engage in civil discourse. They demonize opponents, use the most reprehensible forms of slander and insult, and are routinely shocked when similar invective is heaped on them. I noted yesterday that the core curriculum haredim refuse to teach includes civics.

The attorney issued a public apology and then took a leave of absence. Before removing himself, at least temporarily, from public life, the attorney told Israel radio:

"[MK Cohen} said this to a man, part of whose family
perished in Aushwitz and whose father suffered the horrors of the
Holocaust for four consecutive years," De Hartog told Israel Radio.

"This is what a member of the Knesset - and a rabbi - said to a Jew."

And the 'injuries' suffered by that hareidi rabbi and MK? As I noted yesterday, his face showed no sign of injury, no bruising or redness of any kind. What was wrong with the MK? This:

[MK]Cohen was taken to the Knesset clinic where he was
treated for high blood pressure and was later taken to Hadassah Ein
Kerem hospital for further examinations.

After screaming at the attorney, calling him names, provoking a fight and then getting slapped, the rabbi was found to have elevated blood pressure. What a surprise.

July 10, 2007

A haredi MK gets into an argument with an attorney from the Justice Ministry after a heated committee meeting about allocations to haredi schools given in violation of the law. The MK accuses the attorney of "being worse than the Germans, because the Germans only wanted to destroy our bodies while you want to destroy our souls!" The attorney tells the MK to shut up "or I'll slap you!" Apparently taunting, the MK says "I'm waiting!" The attorney slaps the MK, gets arrested and then released under restrictions, including having no contact with the MK.

The MK, Yakov Cohen says "even my father never hit me like this" and "my whole world went dark." Yet, when photographed after the incident, the MK's face shows no bruising, swelling, redness, cuts or any other signs of injury. The MK wants the attorney fired.

I think it is wrong to lash out physically and the attorney should be reprimanded and perhaps fired. But what of the MK, a Gerrer hasid? Is calling another Jew "worse than" the Nazis appropriate, especially in the Knesset? I think not. Yet haredim do this all the time. They turn secular Jews, Modern Orthodox Jews, Conservative and Reform Jews, into the Other and then demonize them. It is a normal part of haredi discourse, so normal, in fact, that competing haredi factions do this to each other.

This goes to the heart of the matter. Haredim have no civics education, no training in or appreciation for democracy and free debate. This is especially sad because, in its most pure form, the yeshivot that first codified halakha, Jewish law, 1800 years ago operated as mini-democracies, where decisions were made by majority rule. But haredism (and especially hasidism) has corrupted that system to such an extent that democracy has become a foreign element, not a founding principle.

And all of this is especially ironic because the Knesset committee was discussing allocations given illegally to haredi schools. Why were these allocations illegal? Because the law states that a basic core curriculum including basic math, science and civics must be taught in any school that receives state funding. Civics, of course, includes democracy. And the haredi schools in question? That's right – they do not teach it.

UPDATE: The attorney is the son of Holocaust survivors and lost much of his family in Auschwitz. That and more, here.

July 09, 2007

Agriprocessors Gordon, Nebraska plant has been caught by PETA doing much the same things the Postville plant did – using a meat hook to partially rip out the throats of still-living animals. In this case, Rubashkin's workers also cut off sections of cows' ears to remove ID tags.

Here is PETA's brief video of this. It's easier to see the violations if you watch it this way rather than on the embedded video above.

One good thing is that Rubashkin is using standing shechita at Gordon. This gives faster bleed out, faster death and less pain overall than what takes place at Postville. Even so, sticking a meat hook into the gaping throat of a still-conscious animal is a violation of Humane Slaughter law. It is also immoral and cruel and perfectly in tune with Rubashkin's history.

And where, one must ask, is the OU? The KAJ? HaRav HaGaon Wiessmandl? The Crown Heights Beis Din? Where they always are – taking the money and looking the other way.

And the USDA? We know where they are, lost in the abyss of cronyism and corruption George Bush brought to Washington.

As
noted above, this is the second time that PETA has uncovered abuse at
an AgriProcessors slaughterhouse. The investigator's log notes from the
2004 investigation
state that a "worker followed the rabbi and gouged a chunk of flesh out
of the cow's neck and then pulled his trachea or esophagus … outside of
his throat so that it hung down."

"When
I was a boy learning the precepts embodied in the Jewish tradition, I
was taught that the suffering of living things—tsaar baalei chaim—is
morally and religiously intolerable. … What is depicted in this video
is a mockery of these precepts, and a disgrace to Orthodox Judaism."
— Dr. Bernard Rollin

The
investigator's notes went on to say, "The first time I saw a cow
stagger to his feet and walk around with his trachea dangling outside
of his body, I thought to myself, this can't be happening—but after
several days I knew better." Read more details about the first investigation.

After the first investigation into AgriProcessors,
the company promised to stun any animals who remained conscious after
throat-slitting. Unfortunately, the second investigation proved that
AgriProcessors has not lived up to this promise. Rather, AgriProcessors
allowed cows to remain conscious for up to two minutes after their
throats were slit, leading several experts to condemn the company's
practices. Dr. Holly Cheever stated, "This method of slaughter as
depicted on this tape is brutal and should be amended to provide a
humane end for these animals."

… and yet the cabinet voted yesterday to cut the defense budget, ignoring warnings from the defense establishment and new Defense Minister Ehud Barak that these cuts could cripple the IDF. How bad is the gas mask shortage? This Jerusalem Post, which broke the story, tells us:

…Acknowledging
that the population's gas masks will not be renewed and effective for
at least another two years, defense officials told the Post
Sunday that the IDF Home Front Command was currently considering
proposals, if the need arises, to make emergency purchases of gas masks
from Israeli and American companies.

If war were to break out in the coming months, the Home Front
Command would only have enough gas masks for 1.5 million adults and
half-a-million children.

The shortage in gas masks stems from a 2003 Defense Ministry
decision to collect the public's gas masks, a project that only began
at the beginning of 2007. Due to a lack of funds, the project was
recently suspended and is expected to be renewed - following Sunday's
government decision - in the coming weeks.

"This situation could be interpreted as neglect," a senior official told the Post. "If war breaks out and non-conventional weapons are used then we could find ourselves in a major crisis."…

The Olmert government stays in power in part because haredim provide it with a enough votes to hold on. Haredim do this just as they have with other popular and unpopular governments, not based on the competency of the particular government but on the amount of cash stuffed into haredi pockets.

If, God forbid, a war breaks out and if, God forbid, those missing gas masks come into play, the first place blame and political retribution should be directed is to Olmert and his cronies – including haredim – and it should not be forgotten who those haredim are and what yeshivot it is they whore for.

July 07, 2007

Agriprocessors – Rubashkin, Aaron's Best, Shor HaBor, David's, Nathan's and other brands – is recalling almost 36,000 pounds of various prepared meat and chicken products because of undeclared egg albumen, an allergen. Details after the jump. (I.e., click on the link below to see the entire list.)

Failed messiah was established and run in 2004 by Mr. Shmarya (Scott)Rosenberg. The site was acquired by Diversified Holdings, Feb 2016. .We thank Mr. Rosenberg for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish Community.

Comment Rules

No anonymous comments.

Use only one name or alias and stick with that.

Do not use anyone else's name or alias.

Do not sockpuppet.

Try to argue using facts and logic.

Do not lie.

No name-calling, please.

Do not post entire articles or long article excerpts.

***Violation of these rules may lead to the violator's comments being edited or his future comments being banned.***